Bath Chronicle, July 2003

Bath Abbey's acoustic was on its best behaviour to welcome the sound of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. This great work, with its vivid colours and martial rhythms seemed to demand all the resonance the building could give and the effect was dramatic indeed.

 

The orchestra is a training ground for young players under Philip Mackenzie and this piece gives every section an opportunity to show what it can do. The work communicates, in the most compelling way, the extremes of elation and despair in the romantic life of an artist; and it has a strong element of Berlioz' own personal experience at its core.

 

The foundation of this performance rested on some very fine string playing, which allowed the woodwind and brass to produce their own striking contribution, full of rhythmic intensity, accompanied by percussion. Mackenzie handled his big forces with crisp authority.

 

Sibelius' Finlandia opened the programme, with its sonorous brass introduction, leading on to the plangent woodwind and grave strings into the well known melody which floated up into the fan-vaulted roof, enveloping every stone in its mellow warmth. The grandeur of the finale relaxed the audience into the feeling that God's in his heaven and all's right with the world until the Poulenc Organ Concerto made its impact - an entirely different kind of sound.

 

Soloist Peter King showed us the Klais organ in a variety of different moods, warmly tuneful one moment and cheekily dissonant the next. The combination of the fine reed stops and creamy violin tone was ravishing. The competence of these young musicians continues to astonish.

 

Peter Lloyd Williams

© Amadeus Chorus & Orchestra 2007. All rights reserved