St Matthew's Chamber Orchestra

By WILLIAM DART

For 30 years, the brief of St Matthew's Chamber Orchestra has been to perform serious works for chamber orchestra, with the best soloists and conductors available - and to have fun doing it. All these aims were achieved in the first concert of its new season.

True, the opening bars of the Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia were a little shaky, with exposed string playing that not even the generously vaulted ambience could temper. But things settled down and James Tennant's spirited baton drew an almost Bartokian exuberance out of the work at times.

At the other end of the concert, Beethoven's C major Symphony was invested with character, the occasional blurred articulation on the strings in the Allegro con brio being more than compensated for by crisp woodwind playing.

I was elated by the sheer zest of the second movement, thrilled to the thunder of the Scherzo and came away with an admiration for the ensemble of the group's cello section.

The centrepiece was Anthony Ritchie's Concerto for Bass Clarinet and Cello, which had been commissioned by the soloists Andrew Uren and Katherine Hebley.

Ritchie has a keen understanding of his craft and expertly tailors his demands to the skills of the orchestral players.

This made for a punchy performance, especially in the waltz finale. Here it was as if the composer was whimsically revisiting the driving rhythms of his earlier orchestral piece The Hanging Bulb.

A glockenspiel tinkling out Brahms Lullaby at the end of the first movement was a little on the fey side, but the poignant slow movement, an unaccompanied duet for Uren and Hebley, offered more emotional substance.

The ebb and flow of tension were skilfully handled and the two players invested their lines with the sense of intimate dialogue that was demanded.