The St. Helens Sinfonietta splits into two for its early concerts of 2009, fancifully entitled Sympathetic Strings and Favourable Winds. The first instalment, conducted as usual by Alan Free, was given on Saturday 28th February at the impressively refurbished and modernised St. Thomas’s Church, remembered as the venue of the Sinfonietta’s very first concert in 1997. The string orchestra on this occasion was nearly twice as big as on that historic occasion, and I would be able to say that it gave a programme enticingly far from the beaten track, if it wasn't for the fact that the Sinfonietta, not lacking in pioneering spirit, has played all but one of the works before. But together they made a great programme.
The highlight, and the one new to us all, was certainly the oldest work on display, Vivaldi's superb Concerto for Two 'Cellos of 1711. This seldom-heard piece, its outer movements buzzing furiously in minor keys and its central one a feast of yearning intertwined melody, was the perfect vehicle for a pair of young virtuoso 'cellists well-known to our audiences, Ilona Hepburn and Helen Downham -- flawless and full of grace. Lucy, Ilona's three-year-old, was listening and seemed entranced; her four-month-old Jessie slept through it all. The concerto was preceded, in a generous first half, by two other multi-movement works, both of which deserve the label "minor masterpiece": Carl Nielsen's remarkably intense and original Little Suite (1888) and Benjamin Britten's Simple Symphony (1934), a very sophisticated and brilliant work developed from fragments of his childhood compositions. Both were played with love and conviction, though not without some shrillness in Carl Nielsen's exposed high violin writing. A slight orchestral misunderstanding at one point was rescued by conductor and players with admirable skill, not breaking the flow.
The second half, after Sibelius's strange little Romance, brought a further feast of melody and invention, in another work that deserves to be better known, Dvořák's five-movement Serenade for Strings. The orchestra was flying by now, and made light of all the tricky bits and the most of all the tunes. Dvořák's composing has the same quality of combining cogent musical thought with freedom of inspiration. I came upon a member of the audience literally hugging herself with glee at the end. It was that sort of evening.