Two Orchestras
3 April

The main event this week was the departure from work of those people who have been made redundant.

Bookending that sad occasion were two trips to hear orchestral music.

The first took place last Saturday when I went to hear a concert given by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. It contained Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra and Britten's Spring Symphony.

I enjoyed both works moderately well. The Bartok has fond associations for me in that it was the piece of music I was given in a drama competition at school. The Britten I'd only heard once before in another RLPO concert back in the early 70s conducted by Okku Kamu.

I liked Paul Daniels' conducting. Joan Rogers sang well (I've heard her as the Governess in Britten's The Turn of the Screw) as did Timothy Robinson (who played Captain Vere in ENO's production of Britten's Billy Budd which Ross and I saw last December). I was less sure of Hilary Summers who was a late substitution for the contralto part.

So, I smiled, I was engaged, I was pleased but somehow the extra lift that I was seeking did not happen. So, I'm going to award just three stars for the professional good qualities of the experience.

At the other end of the week, Ross and I went up to St Faith's Church in Crosby for a concert by the Crosby Symphony Orchestra. We had liked the concert we attended in February. This was better again as the works we heard (Britten's Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes and Strauss's Four Last Songs) suited the orchestra's abilities far better than the Mozart or the Handel. We should also have heard Sibelius's Symphony No 1 in the second half but Ross was feeling too tired. However, even though the playing was less assured than that of the RLPO, I actually enjoyed the music making far more. So, even for half a concert, I'm going to award four stars.

After the chill of March, it was a delight, in the meantime, to welcome the yellow daffodils closely followed by the yellow of the forsythia and gorse bushes around the region. One by one the blossoms are beginning to appear on the trees and the familiar sharp, raspberry smell of the flowering rhibes in the park mingling with the rich scent of the wakening earth after rain.

Having been held back for so long, everything is coming on quickly now but the spring flowers are all a little stunted. The rhibes in our back garden is about half the size it was this time last year and the wallflowers in the front garden are nowhere near flowering yet. But what holds back some things, suits others and the forsythia, in particular, is massively abundant this year.