Article published in Manchester Evening News 8 May 2015

MANCHESTER Camerata’s final concert of the 2014-15 season at the Bridgewater Hall will be a night to remember. 

For fans of piano, there’s a treat in the form of the young Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 2.

I heard Fliter on her visit to the Camerata in Mozart’s Concerto no. 23 three years ago, and wrote: “She radiates enjoyment and her playing was expertly shaped and expressive. You could not hope for better Mozart playing than in that finale, when fun and exhilaration permeated all.”  

She wasn’t a ‘big name’ then, but her CDs of Chopin and Beethoven have since got southern critics swooning, and she gave the same Mozart concerto at the BBC Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra last year, to rave reviews all round.  

But that’s not all. The other ‘traditional’ music in the concert is by Mozart: the evergreen overture to The Marriage Of Figaro (aka the theme for Trading Places and a range of other soundtracks) and the life-affirming ‘Jupiter’ symphony (no. 41). Gábor Takács-Nagy conducts the Camerata. 

The musicians are also joined by 20 members of their own Youth Forum, for 13 to 20-year-olds in Greater Manchester, creating their own fusion music inspired by The Marriage Of Figaro overture. These guys have already figured in pre-concert performances of pieces they’ve ‘remixed’, but this time they’re mainstage at the Bridgewater Hall. 

It’s called RE:Figared. “They often use beats, rapping, singing or playing instruments,” says Camerata man Paul Davies. “The orchestra work with them and refine the remix before each performance, and for the first time they’ll be with them in the main programme.” 

And the concert also includes a world premiere. It’s a piece called Etudes, written by Jack Sheen, who won the Camerata Composers’ Project last January, when 10 young composers tried their ideas out at the new UKFast Auditorium in Hulme. Jack, from Manchester, was BBC Young Composer of the Year in 2011 and is now on the RNCM/University of Manchester joint course.

He says his piece is ‘a reflection on the various characteristics of music of the classical era’.  

“It attempts to present a series of small musical moments almost as static objects, with the viewers’ perspective constantly shifting through the play of real or imagined repetition and variation.”