Friday 15th November 2002, Sheldonian Theatre
Conducted by Sarah Ioannides
Featuring Priya Mitchell (Violin)
Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet
Sibelius Violin Concerto
Mendelssohn A Midsummer Night's Dream
Saturday 15th February 2003, Sheldonian Theatre
Conducted by Douglas Boyd
Brahms First Symphony
Stravinsky Firebird Suite
A review of this concert was published in The Oxford Times (21/02/2023)
On Saturday, the Oxford University Orchestra distinguished itself in the Sheldonian with performances of two difficult milestones in the orchestral repertoire. Stravinsky's orchestral suite based on his Firebird ballet, and Brahms's first symphony. The OUO resembles the Oxford Bach Choir in working exclusively with professional conductors and soloists - the only one of the University orchestras to do so. The conductor is Douglas Boyd, a world-class oboist and founder-member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Saturday's concert, directed with fire and precision, suggested that he's one of the most gifted orchestral trainers around.
Amateur players simply don't achieve this kind of togetherness without rehearsal that are both minutely rigorous and musically inspiring. In the Firebird music, for instance, the tremolos describing the haunted garden of the magician Kastchey, shot through with occasional woodwind interjections, produced a wonderfully sinister orchestral texture, the 'Ronde of the Princesses', with lovely, warm upper-string sound, the exact opposite. Percussion and brass should be congratulated on their precision in the rhythmically very complex 'Dance of the Firebird'.
Boyd's interpretation of Brahms's First was more lyrical, less 'Beethovenian' than Papadopoulos with the Oxford Philomusica. I particularly liked the gentle way Boyd treated the opening of both first and last movements - we rarely hear the first truly Sostenuto, as marked. But the whole string section did justice to the struggles ahead, and it would be impossible not to single out the First Horn - Justin Boyes (surely a Dennis Brain in the making ) for his glorious fourth movement 'Alpenhorn' entry. The Leader, Camilla Scarlett, should also be very proud of the violin playing in the radiant divisi section of the second movement.
Saturday 17th May 2003, Sheldonian Theatre
Conducted by Leon Gee
Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade
Elgar Introduction and Allegro
Britten Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes
Please let us know if you have any details about this concert, especially the poster
A review of this concert by Hugh Vickers was published in The Oxford Times (23/05/2023):
Continuing an ambitious season, the Oxford University Orchestra gave us on Saturday three of the best-known virtuoso orchestral pieces, culminating in a powerful account of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.
Leon Gee, conducting, seemed - like Douglas Boyd of their last concert - to have the knack of imposing discipline on these young players without sacrificing energy or spontaneity. The Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes were given a performance of urgent dramatic force - I had forgotten the intensely sinister effect of the church-bells on 'Sunday morning', as the odious inhabitants of Britten's 'Borough' go about their business. The 'Storm' was almost too much for the Sheldonian, just as it was in the epoch-making early performances at Sadler's Wells.
If we could have done with a little more light and shade, there was chiaroscuro in abundance in Elgar's Introduction and Allegro for Strings. This work is always played far too tamely - it is indeed a resurrection of the baroque Concerto Grosso, but 'baroque' should imply not elegant precision, but as here - tempestuous contrast between the concertino quartet (sensitively led by Stuart Baran) and the rest of the orchestra. From the first, dramatic coup d'archet the whole string band played with the most refreshing vigour and vitality, particularly in the distinctly tricky fugue.
A violinist friend with whom I attended this concert said he noticed of late a finer, richer tone in the orchestra's string section, and I wonder if that may be partly due to the very gifted leader, Camilla Scarlett. She herself took the leader's seat only for Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, which was remarkable for blazing brass effects, wind solos (the 'Young Prince' trumpet was superb), and thrilling string playing in the final shipwreck. However, framing the ancient saga, were the gentle pleas of Scheherazade to the Sultan - violin solos to which Camilla Scalrett brought an aristocratic refinement of tone and phrasing which would have melted the cruellest tyrant's heart.
