If you’re going to open a major music festival with a work as familiar as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, you’ve got to have a unique selling point.
This performance by the European Union Chamber Orchestra, on the first night of the 2010 Lichfield Festival, had two.
The first comprised four newly-commissioned poems by Sir Andrew Motion.
Melancholy, allusive, and exquisitely read before each concerto by the poet himself, these were an unqualified success.
The second was the presence of Nicola Benedetti as soloist – and this worked rather less well.
With the EUCO being directed from the violin by regular leader Hans-Peter Hofmann, having a star soloist seemed like overkill.
It felt at times as if we were listening to two separate performances – with the buoyant Hofmann occasionally threatening to upstage the official star.
It never really settled down, and Benedetti’s vibrato-free playing threw an unforgiving light on her intonation and phrasing.
After the interval, Hofmann led his forces through a big-hearted performance of Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence – and this was when the evening caught fire.
With some gloriously sweet-toned viola and cello solos, it found just the right balance between chamber-music intimacy and romantic exuberance.
The Festival spirit had finally arrived.
