Now into its second quarter-century, the British Police Symphony Orchestra has achieved marvels in terms of educational outreach, artistic aspiration, and charitable work, and Saturday's event in aid of the Longlands Care Farm near Worcester and its support of disadvantaged young people was a heartwarming example of just what BPSO is all about.
This Celebration of British Music was certainly designed to be a crowd-pleaser, with a finale crammed with Last Night of the Proms-type favourites after a first half beginning with an uneven account of Bax's Tintagel. There were some delicate touches here, conductor Richard Jenkinson drawing some shapely phrasing in his perceptive grip over incident, but there were also some overpowering decibel-levels in this stentorian acoustic which needs no encouragement to aggrandise things.
Then came the evening's most important offering, sitting perhaps uncomfortably in this basically "pop" context, the premiere of Graham Parlett's orchestration of Ian Venables' Remember This. In its original version for soprano, tenor, piano and string quartet, this cantata setting Andrew Motion's poem reflecting on the life of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was first given to huge acclaim at the Cheltenham International Festival (appropiately, given the QM's annual presence at the horse-racing festival there) a few years ago.
Despite the accomplishment of Parlett's orchestration, in its current format the concept doesn't work. There are certainly some vivid instrumental solos (gurgling bass-clarinet, plangent cor anglais and helterskelter percussion come to mind), but the general impression is one of colouristic monotony in this generally slow-moving piece, far removed from the percussive edginess of the original piano-and-strings writing, and certainly devoid of the audience's actual emotional involvement in witnessing the chamber players' activities.
Diction from soloists Claire Prewer and Richard Coxon suffered in this overpowering acoustic, and it didn't help that the printed texts had been subject to some kind of gremlin. But full marks to the remarkable BPSO for featuring this important inclusion, and I shall follow their activities with interest.
