SINFONIA CYMRU

SW ARGUS review for Monday Oct  15 2007

Sinfonia Cymru
The Riverfront, Newport

Several former members of Sinfonia Cymru’s double-bass section have gone on to greater things -  one to the London Symphony Orchestra, another to the Berlin Philharmonic.

That they all play the same instrument is coincidence, for one of the orchestra’s virtues is its balance of forces, with fine music-making likely to turn up anywhere in the ranks.

But the news, and the success of other former members, is a vindication of its principle to give young professionals experience of what it takes to play in an orchestra to a high standard.

Under founder-conductor Gareth Jones it has established a  reputation for disciplined, recognisable performance of the sort that was heard at this concert.
Though not quite as big as a conventional symphony orchestra, it was a compact, well-proportioned unit rehearsed to create astringent performance, typical of which was Mozart’s Symphony No 25, his earliest work in a minor key and which from the start hurls the players into an emotionally agitated world
It is full of upbeat rhythms, strong dynamical feeling and all sorts of other features requiring alertness.

By contrast it is subtlety that marks the function of the orchestra’s strings and harp as accompanist in Richard Strauss’s Concertino for Clarinet and Bassoon, in which the melting soloists were respectively Keith Slade and Sarah Nixon.

Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony benefited from the tighter ensemble, especially in the way its detail is highlighted, such as the Funeral March’s fugue, the brimming vitality of the third movement and the variations of the finale.

Nigel Jarrett