St George’s Bristol
The Swedish orchestra may lack polish but their warm personality shone through in this programme of Mendelssohn, Dvořák, Brahms and Mozart
A programme whose theme was the force that is nature was all too apt for a weekend when storms were tyrannical. Under their chief conductor, Simon Crawford-Phillips, Sweden’s Västerås Sinfoniettabegan their current whirlwind British tour at St George’s. They filled the stage. This is an auditorium whose acoustic best suits recitals, but both the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Aurora Orchestra are regulars there and the mood created is buoyant, especially now that Bristolians are temporarily without Colston Hall.
Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, the original meteorological tone poem, was an obvious opener, with a contemporary one by the Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi to follow. Her Zephyros, an ode to the god of the west wind, with its shimmering whisperings and rustlings and its surface sheen of metallic percussion, reached three climactic points, each dropping away differently and returning – with carefully judged effect – to a seductive breeze.
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