Suffolk Youth Music Gala Concert at Snape Maltings

So here we are at William's last Suffolk Youth Orchestra concert. He is giving it up to concentrate on studying for his 'A' levels this year. You can just about see him and the back of Sarah's head in the the photo on the front cover of the programme, taken at the Easter concert at Snape this year, I think.

In the first half we had the re-formed Suffolk Youth Wind Orchestra (SYWO). Nearly 50 strong now, they are looking to recruit further to get up to 90 players. They made a good sound. I particularly liked their opening Flourish for Wind Band  by Vaughan-Williams, and also their Oregon fantasy for band by Jacob de Haan.The rock version of J.S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor they finished with had me grimacing in distaste, though. What a horrible thing to do to such a good piece!

SYWO were followed by the Suffolk Young Strings (SYS) with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE). And very odd it was too. As Sarah said, it was like the OAE took over the concert and used the SYS for accompaniment. It was as if they were giving a concert to an audience of families with young children, which is not what we were. The audience's children were on stage! What I wanted to hear was the SYS playing by themselves. There were some players on stage who didn't play anything but tap their instruments and sing along for at least the first 10 minutes of their performance. Thumbs down from me, anyway.

After the interval, it was Sarah and William on stage with the Suffolk Youth Orchestra (SYO). The played the Elgar Cockaigne Overture a bit better than they did last time, with lovely Elgarian tone and expression. They followed this with Fauré's delightful Pavane. The woodwind playing was beautiful and the pizzicato string accompaniment sensitively supportive. Then we were treated to Borodin's rumbustuous Polovtsian Dances from the Opera Prince Igor. A chance for the brass to enjoy themselves... and they duly did. A rousing enough finale, but then we got an encore, Les Toréadors from Bizet's Carmen Suite. Terrific! Well done to all.