Anyone fearing for the future of classical music in this country would have been cheered by Saturday's concert in this year's Hagley Music Festival.
Never mind the beautiful evening sunshine suffusing the grounds of Hagley Hall; what was happening inside the charming little church was heartening enough, with musicians from the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain displaying brilliant technique (though one expects that from such an outfit) and an amazing maturity of musicianship, all without the guidance of a conductor.
That quality was foremost in a fluent, well-balanced account of Mendelssohn’s miraculous Octet, written when the composer was roughly the same age as most of these young performers. Birmingham’s own Roberto Ruisi led his colleagues in a reading in which tone was comfortably rich, based on a resonant cello contribution from NYO alumnus Guy Johnston, generously guesting.
But there were so many other delights in this programme masterminded by Elmley de la Cour, another NYO alumnus and contributor to these review pages.
Guy Johnston brought a haunting, improvisatory stillness to two Bach solo cello movements, Octavia Bovey delivered a sultry, imaginatively-phrased Debussy Syrinx for solo flute, and William Knight sustained a beautifully singing line as soloist in the larghetto from Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet.
And Elizabeth Bass scored a personal triumph as last-minute substitute harpist, introducing her items with charm and enthusiasm, and leading her colleagues with unobtrusive authority in Ravel’s fey, wistful Introduction and Allegro and Marcel Grandjany’s Rhapsody (though her selection of the latter might have been a miscalculation, based as it is so obviously on the Ravel template).
There was a bizarre son et lumiere effect going on at the rear of the chancel throughout the evening, whether by accident or design I do not know.
