Concert cracking start to festive season

turn highlighted the authority and enchantment of the strings; heraldic and jubilant horns; an exquisite, melodious clarinet and saxophone duet and flowing cascades of sound led by the flutes.

Alison Cormack performed a lovely, low-key rendition of Bach/Gounod’s Ave Maria, followed by a magnificent wellmodulated version of O Holy Night, backed by the orchestra and Anne Shearer’s sensitive harp accompaniment on keyboard.

Cormack also later sang The Little Drummer Boy but its star was young drummer boy Ned Rainey, and his perfect timing.

Excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite were also a delight: Shearer’s keyboard skills starred again in the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, along with oboe and clarinet. The Suite’s several dances were a joy of varying tempo and melodies, subtleties of timing and motif and string pizzicato.

Following interval, with Alan Gray on harpsichord, the strings accompanied cellists Lissa Cowie and Caitlin Morris in Concerto in G minor for two Cellos by Vivaldi. The emotional expression in this piece, especially the heart-rending largo, was deeply-affecting, drawing prolonged, well-deserved applause.

Brass and percussion shone, too, in this performance, especially in the rousing, polished beat and swing of Jessel’s The Parade of the Tin Soldiers and The Sleigh Ride, by Anderson, complete with whip-cracks, hoof-beats and neighs. A cracking start to the festive season. How lucky are we that so many highcalibre musicians call Nelson home.