Review of Cambridge Philharmonic: Family Concert at West Road Concert Hall

Tim Redmond and the Cambridge Philharmonic Orchestra presented their annual Family Concert at West Road Concert Hall on Saturday afternoon (January 26), reports John Gilroy.

This year’s guest was the celebrated and amazingly versatile Matthew Sharp who, as Master of Ceremonies, added to his accomplishments as a cellist a positively rip-roaring dramatic (loosely animal-themed) performance that kept a packed audience of school and pre-school children on the edge of their seats for best part of an hour (not easy).

As the Cambridge Phil. launched into Stephen Deazley’s & Martin Riley’s Pandemonium, Matthew’s first number, a premiere by the same duo, ‘I am a Wolf’, was heralded by his delivery of howls as he stalked scarily around the auditorium.

‘Follow me to the misty mountain’, he called from beneath his shoulder of grisly wolf fur, baring his teeth and in his wonderfully resonant baritone reminding the kids (kids love to be ‘terrified’) that he was singing for his supper and looking for someone in the audience good enough to ‘eat’.

In addition to his misty mountain ‘friends in high places’ he had friends in low places, too. How low could they go? The bassoons and tuba were there to demonstrate.

The ‘narrative’ was then skilfully, weirdly, developed. The orchestra segued into Sibelius Finlandia, the lights dimmed, and audience members were invited, with the aid of their mobile phone torches, to turn themselves (very effectively) into a school of angler fish. Then Matthew explained that wolves had evolved from whales – cue for him to take off his boots, don a pair of flippers, and commence to join the Philharmonic for Ernst Bloch’s Schelomo for cello and orchestra.

Its sad and haunting tones melting away suggested to Matthew a long sea story involving the ‘mournful Manitee’ for whom the audience, he thought, could invent an appropriate song to reflect her situation.

We were asked to provide words for her predicament, ‘sad’, ‘lonely’, ‘scared’, ‘worried’, display actions that matched the words, and then contribute an appropriate melodic ‘tone’ for each of them. The orchestra meanwhile ensured that the audience’s simple inventions melded beautifully into their performance of the ‘Air’ from Grieg’s Holberg Suite. All great fun, but also a wonderful, and practical, demonstration to the children present (as well as many of their parents) of how music can match emotion, and how melodies are created to do so.

After John Williams’s Raiders March more dramatic exploits followed, with children from the audience volunteering to walk (pace Harrison Ford) a ‘rope bridge’ to the accompaniment of Johann Strauss’s ‘tricky’ Pizzicato Polka.

And so it continued. Orchestra members wearing a variety of ‘hats’, umbrella hats, stetsons, rainbow wigs etc. launched into the Finale of Holst’s Beni Mora suite, before concluding, with a beautiful performance of John Williams’s ET: Adventures on Earth, the audience having voted that really they looked more like ‘aliens’ than ‘animals’.

Matthew Sharp was justly applauded. His well-practised, but nonetheless risky, improvised and high octane presentation was masterful. We 2 o’clock performance people left the concert with probably the same thing on all our minds. He was going to have to do it all over again at 4.00. Good on him! It was great.

JOHN GILROY