Review of Northern Chamber Orchestra Soloists filmed at the Carole Nash Hall, Chetham's

NCO leader Nicholas Ward

The Northern Chamber Orchestra, like so many other musical groups, has bravely kept its main concert series going by a combination of in-person performances where possible, streaming them in addition, and streaming-only where not. By tradition there is an ‘NCO Soloists’ chamber music programme in the mix around this time, and this week it’s a filmed recording of Mozart and Schumann made in the Carole Nash recital hall at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester.

Two utterly wonderful masterworks are on offer for your £15: Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, with NCO principal Elizabeth Jordan joining the string quartet of Nicholas Ward, Simon Gilks, Richard Muncey and Cara Berridge, and Schumann’s E flat Piano Quintet, where the same string players welcome Benjamin Powell as the player of the piano part originally written for Clara Schumann herself.

There’s an hour and six minutes of music, along with informal introductions by Nicholas Ward in the style very familiar to attenders at live concerts by the NCO. Lighting is slightly subdued, and the players sit in the wide V-shape now often adopted for chamber music combinations such as this (rather than the tight U we would have had in socially undistanced days). The cameras are set at various angles and deftly sequenced and merged to create a made-for-TV feel to the video (though the sound in the empty room came over slightly ‘boxy’ to me as a listener).

But it’s the music that counts, and that is beautifully played. Mozart’s quintet is balm for the soul at any time, and even more so just now. In the opening movement each player lets the contours of the melodies shape their phrasing, completely naturally, and the dreamy larghetto brings a lovely tapestry of muted violin sound around the clarinet’s solo line.

For a moment, intonation seems to wander in the minuet, but its trios bounce along, the second, rustic-sounding, one in particular, where Cara Berridge surmounts her exposed arpeggios with grace (and a suitable relaxation in the tempo). The finale manages to be both playful and relaxed at the outset, and by the end its brief adagio episode makes a telling foil to the merriment that precedes and follows it.

The Schumann work finally brings Ben Powell to perform with the NCO after his planned concerto appearance in 2020 had to be aborted at two days’ notice because of Covid. His role may be more modest in a quintet texture, but it has its moments and is nonetheless distinguished. The first movement is full of glorious lyrical exposition of its singing themes, and the ‘march’ tempo of the C minor movement that follows is not too funereal, thanks to a well sustained underlying momentum. The scherzo third movement, with its hammering marcato quavers, warms things up considerably, its first trio sweet and innocent, the second boiling up to great effect; and then things dovetail neatly into the finale, which is joyful, incisive, and builds (as it’s designed to do) to a huge, cumulative climax of musical and emotional power.

Link: https://bitly.com/NCOSoloists21 (£15 for unlimited streaming, available until 2^nd May).