By Lindy Williams, director of chamber choir, Cantores Salicium SETTLE Orchestra’s summer programme was beautifully balanced and performed with great zest. Conductor Maria Camilla ‘Maca’ Barbosa, a post-graduate student at the Royal Northern College of Music, has, over her year with the group, developed its playing with exceptional skill. The evening began with Mozart’s overture, The Impresario, and here the music bubbled with true Mozartian joie de vivre.
Maca drew from the orchestra some excellent playing, showing up the contrasts that the genius of Mozart put into such a short work. Next we heard Richard Strauss’s first horn concerto, written when he was only 18. It is a lively work which shows the variety that can be produced by the horn.
The soloist was Will Padfield, a young player from London who made a nice sound with some good phrasing. Not only does this work require great attention and skill from the player, but also in the accompaniment from the conductor and orchestra. To steer an amateur orchestra thought this difficult work requires sensitivity and very acute listening power, each of which Maca has in great capacity.
She remained calm if there were little glitches and the orchestra was always with her in addition to which, the orchestra played some very tricky passages extremely well. Special mention must go to flautists, Judith Sumnall and Sarah Glossop for excellent playing in a notoriously difficult section in the third movement. To suggest that th.
