For its first orchestral event of the year the St. Helens Sinfonietta had lined up an all-Mozart programme, for which Alan Free came to the podium bearing proudly aloft the orchestra’s trophy from the St. Helens Cultural Awards 2010 – the “Creative Arts Award (professional practice)”. Mozart is always a sure-fire winner, and the orchestra had played most of the programmed items before, but the concert well displayed the steadily rising standards that have made the Sinfonietta eminently award-worthy.

After the curious little Divertimento K.137, the main event featured an instrumental innovation in the form of Peter Hill’s basset-clarinet – the modern version of the almost forgotten 18th-century invention for which Mozart wrote his glorious Clarinet Concerto. The instrument is an extended clarinet with several extra low notes, suppressed in the published score of the Concerto to make it playable on the conventional clarinet. This time we heard all those low notes, and how splendidly they burbled away within the rich texture provided by the orchestra’s refined playing! Peter Hill’s own playing was as wonderfully elegant and (seemingly) effortless as Mozart’s writing.

A less familiar aspect of Mozart’s output arose from his need to prove himself the technical equal of Sebastian Bach, the supreme master of counterpoint. We heard the Adagio and Fugue in which Mozart met this challenge head-on, and for once could not seem “effortless”. It’s a bare-knuckle fight as he relentlessly rams his theme through all the hoops that Bach used to go through without ever seeming to break sweat – and having done the job, he signs off with a brusqueness that suggests he’ll be very glad to return to familiar territory. The orchestra carried out that wish, with a piece that could not have been a greater contrast – the vigorously beautiful and entirely carefree 29th Symphony, played with great verve and authority.

The orchestra and various individual performers face greater challenges in the forthcoming Festival of British Music, a series of four major events (two concerts at the Town Hall sandwiching two at the U.R.C.) sponsored by Arts Council England and St.Helens Council. The Sinfonietta will present masterpieces by British composers of a wide variety of periods and styles, including Walton’s Façade, Sullivan’s Cox and Box, Elgar’s ‘Cello Concerto and Malcolm Arnold’s now little-known but brilliant and hugely appealing Second Symphony. Details are on the Sinfonietta’s web site www.sinfonietta.org.uk (click on Coming Events) – also in the Sinfonietta Prospectus leaflet, available in libraries etc.

Ted Kirk