Sinfonia of Cambridge

22nd January, West Road Concert Hall.

Christopher Adey, Sinfonia of Cambridge, Miriam Kramer (violin) and Maggie Caswell.

[rating:3/5]

Déjà vu is an odd sensation. I felt those uncanny pangs last Saturday as the Sinfonia of Cambridge tackled my A level music set piece, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, alongside Sibelius’ Karelia OvertureViolin Concerto and Britten’s .

The Sibelius is a celebration of Finnish national identity, and the  woodwind section’s strong solo playing was accordingly glorifying. Tight percussion marched the ensemble along in a jaunty fashion. Somewhat ‘fruity’ tuning in the horns sometimes marred the sound, but the effect was very convincing overall.

In the Britten, Miriam Kramer’s violin had a beautiful tone, oozing over the stage in a virtuosic solo with impressive high tessitura passages. Kramer put everything into the darker, faster sections with conductor Christopher Adey extracting great energy from the orchestra. His baton-less style had less of the the metronomic exactitude of others, enabling him to shape the sound like clay. The concerto was outstanding and was very well received.

Mahler’s Fourth Symphony is obsessed with the past, and the neoclassical Schubertian swells and nods to Beethoven were understood well by the orchestra. But Mahler works on many layers and this particular ensemble failed to understand the twisted irony that broods underneath the surface. Trumpet fanfares were meant to be the blaring sound of an army barracks not classical ditties. The intended evocation of a skeletal demon (“Freund Hein”) through a violin tuned one step up was timid and introspective and failed to evoke a the intended ”Totentantz” (death dance).

The apotheosis of the work is in its highly original song-finale, where the soprano is told to “sing with childlike expression”. Yet Maggie Caswell stood out like a sore thumb in her bright attire, spending the first three movements chewing gum and reading the score in the middle of the orchestra. In performance, her strained voice grated in the low register and there was little connection with the audience. Whilst she was indeed child-like, she took this role too far.

The varied programme displayed the strengths of this orchestra but also revealed its weaknesses. Whilst one could bask in the sonority produced in the moments of tenderness and feel the power of the climaxes, exposed sections uncovered flaws in their playing. Christopher Adler tried to hold the whole of Mahler’s world in his outstretched arms, but in doing so missed the subtleties.