The concluding concert of this year’s Festival was one of two halves. Conductor Paul Spicer took the baton at either end for a pair of choral masterpieces, yielding place to Stephen Scotchmer to guide the Basingstoke Symphony Orchestra through a concerto by Saint-Saëns and a short work by Frederick Delius.
Under Paul Spicer’s seemingly tireless baton, the Festival Chorus began proceedings with a spirited account of that evergreen favourite, Parry’s Blest Pair of Sirens. Revelling in the energy that characterizes the bulk of the piece, they struck the right note for the change of mood near the end, and gathered strength again for the exultant ending.
And then at the conclusion of the concert, they were joined by two soloists for a suitably timely choice, the cantata Dona nobis Pacem by Vaughan Williams, which moves from anguished suffering at the outset, to an impassioned prayer for peace at the close.
The soprano Caroline Taylor found a proper degree of urgency in all her contributions, with eloquent tone on display throughout. To the baritone Thomas Humphreys fell one of the work’s solo settings of Walt Whitman’s poetry, the movement called Reconciliation: here, he matched eloquence and passion in equal measure, relishing Whitman’s beautiful text, and was particularly moving at the passage describing a soldier’s glimpse of his enemy dead in his coffin. The combined choirs responded with accuracy and vigour to Paul Spicer’s evident love of Vaughan Williams’s sometimes noisy, often challenging work: the lengthy choral Dirge for Two Veterans was perhaps the climax, performed with a powerful combination of passion and precision.
Between the choral pieces came the Cello Concerto No.1 by Saint-Saëns, in which Lucy Scotchmer (daughter of the conductor Stephen Scotchmer) matched its various quicksilver changes of mood and tempo every inch of the way: the minuet was executed with ideal grace and delicacy. After the concerto, her choice of a Bach solo sarabande made for a perfect encore.
And as an unseasonal item, the Orchestra also gave us a miniature by Delius, his Summer Evening, played with refinement (bravo to the woodwind in particular) and subdued feeling.
The concert as a whole marked a fine ending to another successful Festival– a very big Thank You is due to all those responsible, performers and organisers alike. Roll on next March – and Verdi’s Requiem!
Piers Burton-Page
Image: Lucy Scotchmer
