Wonderful evening of 20th century music

IPSWICH: What a bright start to a wonderful evening of 20th century music.

Gershwin’s An American in Paris is a blend of two different cultures and the Wolsey Orchestra captured both with the brashness of the big band and jazz sequences, plus the sensitivity of the orchestra, in a way that delighted the audience.

Kerenza Peacock is an Ipswich-born young musician now making good on the international stage and was greeted enthusiastically when she came out to play solo in Barber’s Violin Concerto.

The second movement is particularly beautiful and melancholic and she achieved a breathtaking intensity, sustained in the quicksilver but all-too-short last movement.

Rachmaninov wrote his Symphonic Dances in the last years of his life, at the start of the Second World War, and while they do not necessarily have the fireworks of his earlier works they are full of beauty and innovation.

William Carslake was in total control of the orchestra’s forces and mesmerised with his sensitive interpretation and expressive conductor’s dance on the podium.

JOY BOUNDS