Saturday 21 April 2012

Great Music Live!

That was the promise made by the organisers of the Stoke-on-Trent Festival 2011-12 when we ordered our season tickets again last summer. And wow, have they delivered! Last night we were in the Victoria Hall in Hanley for the season's finale - the BBC Philharmonic playing Schubert's 5th, soloist Martin Roscoe playing Beethoven 4th Piano Concerto and ending with Elgar's Enigma Variations! A new conductor to me, Juanjo Mena, brought out the very best from the players to create a really wonderful evening.

I've had a season ticket in the same seat for well over thirty years and I never cease to wonder at how lucky we are in this area in terms of classical music. The current Festival programme offered the BBC Philharmonic, the CBSO,the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Philharmonic and the Halle orchestras. And we have been treated to appearances by, amongst others,  Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lesley Garrett, Tasmin Little and, for my money the most awe inspiring of all, the blind Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii.

And all in a hall built over a hundred years ago! We don't need to spend millions on a hall like the Bridgewater Hall  in Manchester or the Symphony Hall in Birmingham. We've had the best hall for acoustics here in North Staffordshire all the time! Indeed, Sir Malcolm Sargeant went on record as saying that the Victoria Hall was his favourite for having the best acoustics of any hall he'd ever conducted in.

I've already put the dates for next season in my diary!

1 comment:

M. L. Liu said...

"(T)he most awe inspiring of all, the blind Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsuji" -- I hope you agree with me that the music of Mr. Tsujii is superb even disregarding his blindness. As a big fan of Mr. Tsujii in the United States, I am delighted that he has managed to make an impression in the U.K. Mr. Tsujii will return to England on May 24, to perform with conductor Ashkenazy and the venerable Phiharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall. It will be a breathtaking performance of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No 3. They will perform Chopin's Piano No 1 in Bristol on May 29.