In a concert originally billed as the last with Kenneth Sillito as Artistic Director, the Academy
of St Martins in the Fields presented an excellent programme of music by Elgar, Finzi, Mozart and
Walton in Shrewsbury's leading church of St Chad.
Elgar's Serenade for Strings (Op 20) has a quiet serenity overlaying powerful drive and the crisp
and insistent rhythmic inner strings perfectly matched the airy melodic lines of the violins. It was
a pleasure to hear such a strong but sensitive viola section at times providing the driving energy
and at others a rich interweaving counter melody.
Finzi's Romance in E flat (Op 11), a single movement of rich expression, is sometimes characterised
as somewhat melancholy but the Academy's interpretation leaned more to the optimistic and joyous.
The strong sense of ensemble in the Academy is a liberating influence rather than a straitjacket and
it is rare to hear such a controlled performance that still comes across as spontaneous and with
single purpose.
The youthful 17 year old Mozart featured next with Symphony No 17 (K129), an exuberant outpouring
of melodic genius with the addition of horns and oboes. The written-out 'scotch snap' rhythms were
to be heard in another unusual guise in the second half and the excellent acoustic of St Chad's
enabled strings and wind to complement each other well.
The second half opened with two pieces from Walton's "Henry V" – "The Death of Falstaff" and
"Touch her Soft Lips and Part" – played with exquisite attention to detail in dynamics. Kenneth
Sillito felt the audience needed another piece in the performance and introduced "Aurora2 by
Thea Musgrave, a work of interesting contrasts and structure depicting the 'onwards and upwards'
progress of students at Colburn Institute in USA.
The Academy's performance of Mozart's Symphony 29, K201, was nigh on faultless. Fifteen strings
plus wind is probably the perfect size for such a work and the acoustic once again enhanced
the excellent playing. A slightly idiosyncratic rendering of the appoggiaturas as acciacaturas
in the first movement gave an unusual angularity to the sound but this is no criticism. The
Academy is so at home with such music that whatever they do can be taken as legitimate and
thoroughly musical!
Richard Duncan