News and Reviews

Review: The Scottish Connection
Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham - 31st December 2008

sinfonia ViVA's New Year's Eve Gala has now achieved classic status. Wednesday's concert, conducted and compèred by the effervescent Nicholas Kok, amounted to more than a sum of its many parts because there was satisfying substance as well as sparkle.

This year's Scottish theme produced some musical gems. Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave is vividly evocative of the Hebridean journey which inspired it and ViVA's trademark attention to detail ensured that the musical imagery emerged with razor sharpness.

Two pieces in particular captured the mood of the evening. Peter Maxwell Davies's An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise unleashes bad weather and plenty of drunken dancing – before a Highland piper processes in, dressed in full regalia, to represent the dawn. It brought the house down. And then there was ViVA timpanist Graham Hall's Fantasy on Scottish Songs, a brilliantly witty and inventive plum pudding of a piece with lots of musical jokes and plenty of opportunity for audience participation.

There were the traditional Strauss waltzes and polkas played with customary affection and elegance as well as the obligatory Auld Lang Syne – but if the concert had been only a collection of lollipops it would not have been the success it was. And this is why the first-half concerto worked so well. This year young Mayuko Kamio was on hand with her 1727 Stradivarius to perform Bruch's 1st Violin Concerto. Her ability to shape phrases with a sense of gentle rapture was a fitting way to say goodbye to the old year.

Review by William Ruff