Lindow Ensemble
Review By Donald Judge
Some of the audience for this outstanding concert to round off Bollington’s 2024-25 series were privileged to have heard it twice in one day. The Lindow Ensemble usually perform the same programme at the Coffee Concert in Didsbury, prior to their evening concert elsewhere. Emmanuel Church was packed, with Steven Wilkie forced to ask people not to turn up in Bollington unless they already had a ticket. The ensemble had also played most of the programme in Kendal the previous Wednesday.
Talking of Coffee Concerts, the Sunday morning ones by (mainly) Hallé players sell out Springbank Arts in New Mills. Luckily there’s no clash with Bollington’s Coffee Concert on 27th April. It’s cheaper, especially if audience bring a young person, and the cakes will match or even exceed Springbank’s. A violin and guitar duo isn’t the most frequent or familiar combination, but both players are superb, perform together often, and their repertoire includes a substantial piece by Paganini, who was a virtuoso on both instruments.
The Lindow Ensemble is at the opposite end of chamber numbers – some would say an orchestra – and certainly the largest to grace the stage at a Bollington Chamber Concert – though there was no actual stage in order to fit the players into the space. Most remained visible to audience at the same level, as all who can play standing did so. This has musical as well as visual and physical benefits.
How does an ensemble of twelve work as a chamber group rather than an orchestra? To start with, there is no conductor, so the starts, changes of tempo and dynamics are achieved by watching key players. Very often this is the leader Steven Wilkie, but others influence or control events: the observant may have noticed Adrienne Spilsbury discretely indicating the tempo in her piece when her instrument was silent. This alertness, the eye contact, the give and take, knowing when to shine and when to let your colleagues do so, the trust in each other, are the most engaging facets of chamber music making.
As Steven Wilkie pointed out, the Lindow Ensemble is probably unique in its combination of professionals, students, and amateurs: an arrangement that benefits and inspires everyone. The Lindow Ensemble further benefits some lucky children with their workshops in schools. Engagement with communities is key to obtaining funding, and can be life changing.
The programme was a lovely combination of four less familiar short works, and a more familiar masterpiece filling the second half. Steven’s mis-speak about Vivaldi being promiscuous was strenuously denied by the composer himself. He was, after all, a priest, though he may well have been bedazzled by some of his leading ladies, especially in his many operas. He was certainly prolific, as Baroque composers tended to be, in contrast to what they would have seen as their more precious Romantic and later composers. Agonising about the new music demanded by audiences didn’t keep the wolf from the door. Vivaldi was certainly profligate at times: he made fortunes and lost them, often trying to get his operas staged: he died as poor as he was born, the son of a barber, albeit a musical one. He struggled to control and reap all the rewards in the face of unofficial copies of his work. His Sinfonia in G major, the prelude to an unknown opera, was the perfect opener for this concert. It showed many of the traits familiar from The Four Seasons, initially arresting, then lyrical, and finally a brief rumbustious dance before curtain up – to reveal a Chesire wildflower meadow and the Eyebright in particular.
This is a very striking piece by the multi-talented Adrienne Spilsbury. It’s atmospheric, fluid in its harmonies and moods, with very subtle musical depictions of the flower and the effects on it of the changing weather and insects. String-playing composers, especially violists, are often masters of writing for strings – one thinks immediately of Mozart and Britten – and Adrienne’s colleagues clearly love playing her work.
A digression to say that the three amateur players – Adrienne, Nicola and Anna – will have been familiar faces to audiences for concerts in the Music at Mike’s lunchtime series at St Michael’s in Macclesfield, and at concerts and Messiah for All from the local choral society, Bollington Festival Choir, which premiered Adrienne’s setting of Walter de la Mare’s Winter in December. Nicola Bright is again leading the orchestra when the Choir performs Handel’s Coronation Anthems on 6th April. Steven made a perceptive observation about Britain’s amateur music-making scene being second to none: this is true nationwide, and locally with a plethora of choirs, brass bands, orchestras and other ensembles all aspiring to excellence, and being such an important part of physical and mental health. Amateur dramatics can be added to that list.
Another reflective piece followed Eyebright – a rarity by a youthful Rachmaninov – an arrangement of the slow movement of an unfinished string quartet. It worked very well for a larger ensemble with the added depths of the double bass played by Roberto Carillo-Garcia, who for 17 years was principal bass of the Hallé Orchestra. Composers often start from the bass up, as it underpins the harmony, and sonorous, supportive and nimble bass players are essential to so many groups, from many folklore bands to symphony orchestras. It was good to end the first half with the familiar – Bach’s concerto for two violins – and heartwarming to see leader Steven playing second fiddle to his colleague Christopher Newton, though being Bach there’s equality of challenge, and the two violinists – indeed the whole ensemble – were equal to it.
After coffee or stronger refreshments not normally available at Coffee Concerts, came the magnificent Tchaikovsky Serenade which is arguably unsurpassed among original works for string orchestra. All his hallmarks of memorable melody, prowess as a composer for dance, powerful emotions, master of symphonic form and the unmistakable Russian flavour, are there. This was the time for the big gestures and the big sound: the Lindow Ensemble excelled themselves, equally convincing in Baroque, Romanic and Contemporary repertoire, sending the audience home well satisfied – and hopefully eager to hear them again in Didsbury or Macclesfield on 14th June, or in Forsyth’s Music Shop in Manchester the following day, for all of which they’ll be joined by the excellent Ian Buckle in Mozart’s E flat Piano Concerto. Any prizes for being at all three? Only musical ones.