I am still not sure how to pronounce \u2018Chineke\u2019, an exclamation word in the Igbo language, roughly equivalent to \u2018wonderful\u2019 in English. However, that hardly matters. What is important is that on the evening of Tuesday 6 June, the Salisbury Festival audience was treated to a \u2018wonderful\u2019 concert in Salisbury Cathedral from The Chineke Orchestra, Europe\u2019s first professional orchestra of black and minority ethnic musicians.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>I suspect I wasn\u2019t the only member of the audience unfamiliar with the composer of the first piece, Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint George, who I now know to be a contemporary of Wolfgang Amadeus and widely known as \u2018The Black Mozart\u2019, (even my husband, who is far more knowledgeable than me regarding classical music wasn\u2019t aware of his work). We were treated to his Overture from L\u2019Amant Anonyme, a delightful piece, performed elegantly by this talented orchestra.<\/p>\n Then came Haydn\u2019s Violin Concerto No. 1 in C Major, starring violinist Tai Murray, who gave a truly outstanding performance. Not only was her playing superb, but her verve, passion and energy filled every inch and crevice of Salisbury\u2019s medieval Cathedral. The slow movement with masterly playing in the high register against a delicate soft plucked base from the strings outshone the \u2018lark ascending\u2019 as if there was a nightingale fluttering above the hushed audience. Real atmosphere.<\/p>\n For me, the Elgar Serenade for Strings in E minor felt a little out of place in this mainly baroque programme, but then came the sparkling performance of Mozart\u2019s Symphony No 29 in A Major. The wind section returned to the stage for this piece performed at a cracking pace.<\/span> I am sure Mozart would have approved\u2026 and we did too, with not less than five minutes rousing applause at the end.<\/p>\n The energetic young conductor, Jonathan Haywood, currently Assistant Conductor of the Halle Orchestra, deserves his reputation as one of the most exciting conductors of his generation. I really enjoyed watching him, he was so enthusiastic and vigorous with sweeping, but precise gestures – almost dancing at times.<\/p>\n This concert will surely go down as one of the highlights of the exciting 2017 Festival. The sublime playing and clear musical talent was further enhanced by the rather dashing, attractive orchestra members, a feast for the eyes as well as the ears. And it\u2019s not often one can say that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am still not sure how to pronounce \u2018Chineke\u2019, an exclamation word in the Igbo language, roughly equivalent to \u2018wonderful\u2019 in English. However, that hardly matters. What is important is that on the evening of Tuesday 6 June, the Salisbury Festival audience was treated to a \u2018wonderful\u2019 concert in Salisbury Cathedral from The Chineke Orchestra,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":1,"label":"Uncategorized"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Rebecca Ladbury","author_link":"https:\/\/thedigitaldepot.co.uk\/ladburypr\/author\/rebecca\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":1,"name":"Uncategorized","slug":"uncategorized","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":1,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":183,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":1,"category_count":183,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Uncategorized","category_nicename":"uncategorized","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedigitaldepot.co.uk\/ladburypr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedigitaldepot.co.uk\/ladburypr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedigitaldepot.co.uk\/ladburypr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedigitaldepot.co.uk\/ladburypr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedigitaldepot.co.uk\/ladburypr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thedigitaldepot.co.uk\/ladburypr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1458,"href":"https:\/\/thedigitaldepot.co.uk\/ladburypr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions\/1458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedigitaldepot.co.uk\/ladburypr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedigitaldepot.co.uk\/ladburypr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedigitaldepot.co.uk\/ladburypr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}