The Royal Tunbridge Wells Symphony Orchestra’s 2024/2025 season will be one of reminiscing and looking forward.  The six concerts include renowned soloists, most of whom will be making very welcome return visits, having charmed and delighted the Assembly Hall audiences many times.  None more so perhaps than this opening concert’s soloist, Freddy Kempf. Since he first played with the orchestra in 1994, having won the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition in 1992, Freddy has performed with the RTWSO on no fewer than eleven occasions,  many of them with Roderick Dunk, the RTWSO’s principal conductor and Music Director. This holds the record for a particular soloist performing with the RTWSO. We hope, and expect, to see Freddy on many future occasions.

In this concert, Freddy was the soloist in the well-known Piano Concerto by Grieg. That it is a very familiar piece and has appeared in several guises over the years in films, and to comic effect in TV programmes, does not make it trite. It is a brilliantly conceived piece full of contrasts requiring great skill and technical ability on the part of the soloist to bring out the various nuances. It contains bravura passages for the soloist, powerful pounding of the keyboard – Grieg did suggest this by putting ‘marcato’ in the score – and a very tender touch in the slow middle movement. This was all sympathetically matched by the orchestra. Throughout the performance there was total rapport and empathy between soloist and orchestra and, at the end, much-deserved thunderous applause rang out. As mentioned earlier, Roderick Dunk and the RTWSO have collaborated with Freddy several times since 1994, and it was a special moment at the end of the concerto to see them together receiving such acclamation from the Assembly Hall audience.

The new season and this concert started in a very bright, breezy way with the Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla by Glinka. I confess that I was surprised at the breakneck speed at which it was played but, it needs to go at ‘a fair lick’ otherwise it loses effect and becomes dreary and pedestrian. It’s on a par with The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba by Handel; take it at a speed anything less than very fast and it just doesn’t work. This was a good work-out for the orchestra with plenty of exercise for fingers and lungs!

Closing the concert was Elgar’s Symphony No. 1. It is an expansive work scored for a larger than usual orchestra. Elgar didn’t opt for half measures in his instrumentation. The usual woodwind strength of eight players was augmented to twelve with the addition of piccolo, cor anglais, bass clarinet and contrabassoon. There were also two harps, and ‘bumpers’ to support the brass section. In the excellent programme notes by Tony Summers, he pointed out that the work is in cyclic form where themes stated in the first movement appear in later movements. The first movement is marked “Nobilmente e semplice” (noble and simple) and a tune so ‘noble and simple’ introduces the work. Crossword lovers will know that an anagram of Elgar is ‘Regal’ and this tune certainly is! It can be heard recurring throughout the piece. Elgar really knew how to compose a good tune – think of his Land of Hope and Glory.  However, this symphony is long, about fifty minutes in length, and it is also a tricky work to negotiate with cross-rhythms, syncopation and off-beat entries. The RTWSO carried it off very well, and there were probably some very tired players at the end of the concert.

I mentioned in the introduction about a season not only of reminiscing and remembering past times and performances but also that this coming season would be looking forward, to new beginnings. 2024/2025 will be the last season that Rod Dunk will be at the helm. The selection process for his replacement is now almost complete and the three short-listed conductors will each conduct a concert during this season. Then at the final concert on 6 April 2025, it is expected that Rod’s successor will be announced. Exciting times to come, but before we get ahead of ourselves, we can reflect upon a wonderful first concert to the season.