Lakeland Sinfonia October 2025
Saturday 4th October 2025
The orchestra was in fine form for this, the first of the new season’s concerts. Immediately, our attention was arrested by the performance of Mendelssohn’s well-known ‘Hebrides Overture’. The well balanced string section sounded very confident, with the cellos making a lovely sound in the two principal melodies in the work. The woodwinds, of course, had very important contributions to make and they sounded extremely confident in their entries. Conductor, Anna Castro Grinstein paced the work well; the wide range of dynamic markings in the score were carefully observed and the climaxes were exciting and well controlled.
Pianist Martin Roscoe can always be relied upon to give an assured performance of whichever concerto he is asked to play. His delicate playing of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 captured the full essence of the solo role with the orchestra supporting him sympathetically throughout.
It was good to have a work by the British-born composer Ruth Gipps included in the programme. Her music is now coming back into fashion after a long period of neglect. Cringlemire Garden, subtitled ‘Impression for String Orchestra’, is a work in the pastoral idiom, very much in the tradition of Elgar and Vaughan Williams whose influence could be heard in the score. The strings produced a rich body of sound and there were impressive solos from all the section leaders.
Finally, we heard Beethoven’s first symphony. Again this was a very confident performance with the last two movements in particular moving at great speed. Anna Castro Grinstein is very restrained in her gestures but she made her intentions clear to the players who responded well. The introduction to the last movement was well managed; it is not an easy movement to begin because of the several seemingly false starts written into the first violin part.
All in all, this was a very impressive concert much enjoyed by all present, although it was sad to see that the Westmorland Hall was less than half full: the orchestra deserves much better support than this!
Clive Walkley
