It’s always embarrassing for a critic to arrive late, but it was particularly frustrating to miss the first half of the final concert of the Sutton Coldfield Philharmonic Society’s 85th season. We’d heard great things about the young British cellist Richard Harwood; as it is, we caught only the last few moments of an enthusiastically received account of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto.
That left the second half: Michael Seal and the Sinfonia of Birmingham, in Vaughan Williams’ wartime Fifth Symphony. With its hushed intensity and vast sense of space, the Fifth wasn’t perhaps an ideal choice for the linen-cupboard acoustic of Sutton Coldfield Town Hall. That it came over as eloquently as it did is down to the practical musicianship of Seal – and the alert, sensitive response of his players.
Carefully handled dynamics from the horns and shimmering, lustrous tone from the upper strings evoked the huge, misty landscape of the opening Preludio; trombones swelled nobly at the great “Alleluia” modulation that crowns the recapitulation, and the woodwinds hymned together as sweetly and subtly as any cathedral choir.
Beautifully-shaped wind solos (a wonderfully smoky and plangent cor anglais in the Romanza) and unobtrusive but animated inner voices made the symphony sing and glow right through to the quiet ecstasy of the closing bars. Through it all, Seal shaped individual phrases and movement-long arcs with the same quiet sense of purpose; it brought to mind Sibelius’s description of a symphony as a mighty river. The symphony is repeated at CBSO Centre on November 9.
