It is now almost a decade since a great gift was bestowed on the music lovers of Bishop’s Stortford: their own orchestra, writes Richard Allaway.
Formed of a mixture of professional and amateur players from around the district, the Bishop’s Stortford Sinfonia got off to a promising start and quickly gained a reputation for high-quality playing. Buffeted, like so many organisations, by the impact of Covid lockdowns, how has it fared in recent years?
On the evidence of its concert at the Bishop’s Stortford College’s Memorial Hall on Sunday April 21, great strides have been made to consolidate and improve on the already high standards of the orchestra’s nursery years.
Probably the best thing to happen to the Sinfonia has been the appointment as principal conductor of California-born Rebecca Miller, who has directed countless orchestras across the USA, UK and Europe, and yet finds the time and energy to bestow all her experience and enthusiasm on the Stortford band.
Under her direction, the players of the Sinfonia have gelled and matured as a group, growing in confidence as they work together. The string section, especially, has found that elusive final 5% in terms of solid intonation which transforms the quality of sound and, in turn, reinforces the confidence of their playing, creating a virtuous circle and producing something which they could be proud to describe as the “Stortford Sound”.
This was particularly evident in the sweeping melodies of Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture and in the rich second movement sonorities of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, but even the most frenetic and dramatic passages didn’t rock the tuning in the way they might have done back in pre-Miller days.
Credit for this tighter string ensemble must, of course, also go to the orchestra’s leader and artistic director, Tanya Barringer, who has taken ownership of the first desk and helped inspire that confidence which was visible in the body language of the team around her.
The quality of playing is by no means the only area where Miller has made her mark. Another is in her determination to offer a spotlight to the many female composers whose names are beginning to emerge from obscurity, which at this concert meant we heard a work which would otherwise have passed all of us by: the Bassoon Concertino by Broxbourne-born Irish-English composer Dame Elizabeth Maconchy.
What a marvellous instrument the bassoon is! Far from just plodding away at the bass line, it can “sing both high and low” with the smoothest of legato or the sharpest of staccato, characterful, emotional, playful or other-worldly. Soloist Amy Harman, one of the country’s leading exponents of the instrument, demonstrated the full range with style and aplomb and created a hall-full of Maconchy fans.
Perhaps the most important aspect of all Miller’s work with the Sinfonia is her determination to make music more accessible and attractive to everybody, and particularly to open up pathways to get young people excited about orchestral music.
As we have come to expect, she strode onto the stage and, rather than silently turn her back on us, declared: “I just want to say hello, and talk a little bit about the music.” Which she did, in some detail; and the more she does so, the more the audience seem to like it.
Before the symphony, she actually got the orchestra to play snippets in advance so that we could listen for them as the music unfolded – now that’s a service you wouldn’t get from a London orchestra!
Rebecca also took time to remind us of the Sinfonia’s outreach initiative, Sound Mind, which aims to improve mental health and inclusivity. Details of these invaluable activities are on the Sinfonia’s website.
So what was the music like? Seriously impressive. The Brahms, from a tightly controlled pianissimo opening, developed a symphonic breadth that swept us along. The Maconchy was elegant and stylish. And the Tchaikovsky was simply breathtaking from start to finish, whether in moments of delicate solo playing in the woodwinds or in whip-crack fortissimos that shook the rafters of the august Memorial Hall. Throughout the evening, the constant pleasure was hearing that polished “Stortford Sound” and seeing the delight it was bringing to the players.
The programme assured us that work is already well advanced on designing the Sinfonia’s 10th anniversary season. Long may it flourish!