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Newsletter, September 2007

Christopher Sturdy, Chairman and Treasurer of the Orchestra, has (by invitation, I assure you!) contributed a substantial article to this issue of the Newsletter. His words concerning the recent history of the Orchestra and our future plans owe much to the work of Mark Foster, who sadly died in July. Mark was of course the Orchestra’s (and its predecessor, Cheltenham Sunday Players’) conductor for nearly 30 years.

You can read Christopher's piece at the end of this newsletter.

Mark and Douglas Smith were the driving forces, establishing it as a leading non-professional orchestra in this county. Mark conducted no fewer than 328 concerts between 1970 and 1999, but that dry statistic tells only part of the story. He directed our music-making with great skill, sensitivity, patience and good humour.

Mark also quietly and unobtrusively supported and encouraged many young local players, for instance by giving them playing opportunities or endorsing their applications for music college. He was responsible for beginning the practice of inviting the Gloucestershire Young Musician of the Year to perform with the Orchestra each year. He was of course also conductor of the Gloucestershire Youth Orchestra for many years.

Mark was to have taken part in our 400th concert at Pittville Pump Room in December, but sadly that was not to be. We shall still be performing the work that he had chosen to conduct, the Overture “Ruslan and Lyudmila” by Glinka.

 

From the AGM of the Friends March 2007

The serving Officers were re-elected nem con:
Andrew Chapman (Chairman), Ron Nourse (Secretary) and Shirley Ridout (Treasurer).

The Treasurer reported that income for 2006 had been £6421, an increase of £925 over 2005. Donations were £4989 and a further £1432 was gained through Gift Aid refunds and interest on the deposit account.

The Friends paid £7000 to the Orchestra in 2006. By comparison the annual average payment over the three years 2003/2004/2005 the figure was £5590. At the end of 2006 the Friends had reserves of £8493 compared with nearly £9000 at the end of 2005.

 

Review of concerts in first half of 2007

All Saints Church Cheltenham 17th March 2007

Martinu gives orchestra a melodic trump card
(by Roger Jones, Gloucestershire Echo)

Czech composers whose works reflect the nostalgia, folk roots and rural idylls of their homeland featured in this concert given in aid of the Gloucestershire Arthritis Trust. Dvorak’s Symphonic Variations, of which there are 27, are a seamless entity but were discernibly played under the baton of David Curtis. The music culminates in a fugal Finale which was assertively delivered.

The Meditation for String Orchestra by Suk was pleasingly gentle with its improved tonal quality in the violins.

Two symphonic poems from Smetana’s Ma Vlast depicting rural Czechoslovakia were confidently played. In Vltava and From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields the flutes gave sparkle to the flowing melodic strings depicting the great river Vltava.

For me, the trump card of the evening was the inclusion of Martinu’s Sixth Symphony composed in the early 1950’s. Having only three movements it doesn’t fit the classical symphonic form and has a freedom of development which Martinu saw as a challenge and a goal.

The Orchestra created an interesting atmosphere with the undercurrent of buzzing from the strings and a frequently heard three-note motif. Beautiful melodies shone through in the final movement securing a successful interpretation of a work the orchestra should consider including in forthcoming programmes.

Tewkesbury Abbey 9th June 2007

CSO is sprightly breath of fresh air
(by Roger Jones, Gloucestershire Echo)

Two years ago Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra premiered Andrew Chapman’s Cello Concerto in Tewkesbury Abbey. His latest work, Three Movements for Orchestra, was composed with the Abbey’s acoustics in mind.

By keeping passages for full orchestra to a minimum, and using smaller groups of instruments he achieved greater clarity of texture than is usual in the building’s vastness.

There were hints of Messiaen in the first movement, while the second was of a more reflective and religious nature. The sprightly finale, with its contrasting rhythms, worked particularly well and David Curtis’ assured conducting kept the orchestra well on track.

Mahler’s gargantuan Third Symphony took up the lion’s share of the concert in aid of Gloucestershire’s MS Therapy Centre.

All of the county’s brass players seemed to have been pressed into service for the sprawling first movement, and David Curtis performed miracles with the orchestra to get it through such a gruelling marathon intact.

Fortunately, the other movements are shorter and more manageable. The second, played with the utmost delicacy, came as a breath of fresh air, and in the fourth the voice of contralto Diana Moore soared gloriously above the sounds of the night.

The cheerful fifth movement brought in the ladies of the Cheltenham Symphony Chorus singing excitedly about angels and the Tewkesbury Schola Cantorum imitating the sound of bells. The sublime Adagio which concluded the work was a moving experience for everyone.

By  Andrew Chapman

It is a unique experience for a composer to sit in the audience and hear the first performance of your work played by real live musicians. You have lived with the piece for months, honing, editing, revising, all in an attempt to produce a finished product that will do justice to both the inspiration and to the players who will perform its sometimes tangled complexities.

It has been in your head for ages, now it is filling the public space (in this instance the resonant vastness of Tewkesbury Abbey.) Will it work? It is a moment that combines excitement and terror.

I think it did. It sounded much better than it did in my head. Musicians take notes and turn them into music. The CSO had worked very hard under the committed tutelage of David Curtis and, as a result produced a piece of music that surprised and delighted me. Yes, of course, there were ‘moments’; what first performance does not have them. There were bits that made me wonder whether I had got it right (I probably hadn’t) but both of these provisos were minimal.

The reception was pleasing – as was the Echo review – one pertinent comment came from my brother “Good piece but bad name” so now it is known as Sinfonietta – if it ever gets another performance!

Leonard Stanley Priory 30th June 2007

One of the Cheltenham Symphony’s favourite concert venues is the Priory Church at Leonard Stanley. It is not only for the warmth of welcome but also for the enthusiasm of the audience that we have returned there each year for nearly 30 years to take part in their Music at the Priory summer festival.

And in more recent years it has been the event where the orchestra has performed a concerto with that year’s Gloucestershire Young Musician of the Year. This all combines to make our visit to Leonard Stanley a much enjoyed concert for musicians and audience alike.      

This year the winner of the GYM competition was a violinist, Edgar Bailey. He had chosen the Bruch Concerto No. 1 in G minor. It was clear that, despite his relative youth, Edgar had captured both the structure and the substance of this work. Of particular note was the beauty and sensitivity of his playing in the Adagio at the centre of the work. In complete contrast was the quicksilver last movement – marked allegro energico – where both soloist and orchestra just managed to stay on the rails, no mean feat in this rapid music.

Edgar received a full-blooded and thoroughly deserved reception from the Leonard Stanley audience. It is a great shame that this is to be the last year of Music at the Priory. We shall miss it.

and finally, some dates for your 2008 diary

March 1st at Cheltenham Town Hall - Mayor of Cheltenham’s charity concert.

November 8th at Tewkesbury Abbey – Britten’s “War Requiem”

Full details for 2008 will be published in our Concert Programme leaflet at the end of 2007.

 

Supplement to Newsletter September 2007

From Christopher Sturdy, Chairman and Treasurer of Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra

It's due to a quirk of history that I currently occupy the posts of both Treasurer and Chairman of Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra.  I had already served as Treasurer for some time when Peter Tomlinson decided to retire from the Chairmanship and I was asked to take it on.  Peter had most ably guided the Orchestra through the transition from what I amicably describe as the Benevolent Dictatorship of Mark Foster, to the more conventional committee system of management of such societies.  Peter had also presided over the process of appointing a new conductor following Mark's retirement, and his hard work at that time has stood us in good stead - it is now eight years since David Curtis took up the post, having decided to make the change from professional viola playing, not least as a founder member of the highly-respected Coull quartet, with which he played for 26 years.

Having performed in my first public concert (in Reading Shire Hall) in 1961, and having continued to play horn ever since, in spite of endless attempts to persuade me to stop for everybody's sake, I have very wide experience of sitting under conductors - scores and scores of them you might say - and of course they have very wide experience of my (what we horn-players call) bum notes, poor things. 

But I have learned that within the framework of an Orchestra's tribal culture - and they are all subtly different - it is the conductor that has the vital influence on the standard of playing in the orchestra.  Non-professional players, by which I mean those who, although they might teach music during the day do not play for a living, do not generally come out on a dark night to rehearse at 7.30 for two hours in order to have an easy time; they want to be challenged, disciplined, to improve the way they play and, at least in CSO, to improve the standard of performance. They want to be stretched without being shouted at, encouraged without being allowed to get away with sloppy or lazy playing.

I think CSO's standard of performance has steadily improved under David.  Our spouses can be some of our, shall we say, most honest critics, and I was amazed at a recent CSO concert to be told by the wife of one of our longest-standing players, that she felt privileged to be in the audience.

Eventually, of course, an orchestra will die if its membership is not renewed.  Years ago (not in CSO) I used to sit behind an old chap at the back of the second violins who played only the first note or so of every bar (late), and we used to worry about his chances of surviving the rehearsal.  Fortunately CSO has a rising number of good young players, particularly in the strings, which is a delight.  We hope we have encouraged younger players to feel at home by such moves as engaging the talented winner of the 2006 Gloucestershire Young Musician competition, Amelia Jones, to lead the orchestra in some of our concerts, where she has been very well received.

Every year we offer a concerto engagement to the winner of the competition, and in recent years our Assistant Secretary, Ron Nourse, has also encouraged us to engage a winner of the Philip and Dorothy Green Awards for Young Concert Artists (AYCA), sponsored by Making Music, as a soloist in one concert each year, and these concerts have been a great success. On October 13th recent winner Oliver Coates will play the Dvorak Cello Concerto with us in Tewkesbury Abbey, and on Dec. 16th Samantha Ward, who played a memorable Grieg Piano Concerto with us in 2005, returns to join us in Pittville Pump Room with a performance of Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini.  Also performing in that concert will be the choir of Leckhampton Junior School; we hope that having the chance to perform with a symphony orchestra and see at close range and probably for the first time how it all works, will encourage some of these children to continue with their music and instrumental studies - climbing the hard mountain of learning to play an instrument in ensemble.

As Treasurer, I have been known to take a more commercial than artistic view of such concerts, and my view is that if you're going to perform with children, bring on lots of them, because their doting parents and relatives will buy lots of tickets and help our funds.  It's also more rewarding to have a full house, and with so much classical music being performed around our area, large audiences are not guaranteed. One of the policies which the Orchestra has had for many years is to offer concerts to a Charity. Under this scheme, the Charity will pay a fixed amount to the Orchestra, typically between £800 and £1,600 depending on the concert, in return for keeping all the ticket and programme note receipts. For this to be a financial success the Charity's local committee members need to be able to motivate their donors to come to the concert in reasonable numbers, and it has led to a local Charity making over £3,000 on one concert.  We also operate a scheme called the coloured ticket scheme, under which a Charity can take coloured tickets on sale or return, and in the case of a £12 ticket, keep £10 and pay CSO £2 for every ticket they sell.  We are always glad to hear from Charities who might be interested in either of these schemes, and for these concerts we try and play more 'popular' programmes.

Nonetheless, our playing members are always glad to explore beyond the range of Classic-FM's hundred best-loved pieces, and we play a very wide range of composers, from Handel to living composers. Recently we have performed works by Julian Philips and Paul Patterson, as well as two premieres composed for the Orchestra by our Secretary Andrew Chapman. In recent years we have also felt confident enough, encouraged by David Curtis to extend our range, to perform one very large-scale work each year, including Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony, which required a total of 110 players, including 20 horns; and Mahler's Second and Third Symphonies. Rehearsing and performing these works has challenged us all, but we feel has been very well worth it - they are pieces which we might play only once or twice in a lifetime.

Not everything we do suits everyone involved; as in all life, it's often necessary to find a balance.  Perhaps I shouldn't go public on this, but I operate a private imaginary gadget called the Whingeometer.   The idea is that if the number of complaints, milder or stronger, against some project or policy is balanced by the number of appreciative comments from our members and audience, then I consider the needle to be at about zero, and that we're getting it about right.  Better still is where there are no complaints and we know we are probably getting it right.  Recently the gadget was used to reduce the number of concerts we perform each year from seven or eight to around six, and the needle seems to have steadied.  This is not to say that we don't want feedback; it is the lifeblood guiding policy in this particular corner of our lives that is CSO, and as Chairman I like to operate a society without secrets, where all the information is available to anybody, and all can contribute.

And very many of our members do indeed contribute, and so will others when their lives with work and children and ageing parents may in future give them enough time to do so.  But perhaps that is material for a future edition of this Newsletter.

At the moment I am enjoyably engaged in organising CSO's visit to Annecy in the summer of 2008, where we hope to be giving three concerts as part of the Festival of Music and Nature in the Bauges mountains to the southwest of Annecy.

This will be a first visit abroad for the Orchestra, and we are all greatly looking forward to it.