Chineke! Orchestra June 2019 tour with Stewart Goodyear & Wayne Marshall
Chineke! Orchestra’s tour of England venues with compser/pianist Stewart Goodyear and conductor Wayne Marshall featured performances at Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s Southbank, Anvil Arts Centre in Basingstoke, Birmingham’s Town Hall Symphony Hall and Bridgewater Hall Manchester.
Repertoire included Grieg Peer Gynt Suite, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Ballade, Stewart Goodyear’s Callaloo Suite (a UK premiere for the work) and Dvorák Symphony No.7 in D minor.
Concert goers from each venue were warm and enthusiastic in their praise for the performances, with many noting how the diverse audience displayed a truer reflection of the multicultural make up of Birmingham and Manchester.
Read the full reviews from Midlands Music Reviews, The Arts Desk and Classical Source.
“The audience was a particularly enthusiastic one, giving rapturous applause at the end of every movement of every piece. Even the stage manager was heartily clapped as he came on to lift the piano lid ahead of Goodyear’s performance. Though clapping in between movements is, in today’s classical music circles, strictly Not. The. Done. Thing., the fact that this orchestra brought in a new audience, unused to the unwritten conventions of a concert hall, can only be a positive, and perhaps other groups could take note.”
“Marshall drawing out all the tonal beauty of finely-honed woodwinds and delicate, golden-sheened strings. Indeed, rarely have I heard this quintessential charmer treated with such loving care and detail.”
“Eric Lamb’s flute captivated from the start and thereafter ‘Morning Mood’ unfolded with natural ease, its ebb and flow nicely caught. ‘The Death of Åse’ was suitably poignant, Wayne Marshall coaxing plenty of warm string tone and gathering the short phrase patterns into a sweeping panorama, yet not without depth of feeling. Strings and a perfectly balanced triangle brought scintillation to ‘Anitra’s Dance’, during which melodic sub-clauses were skilfully integrated. An initially tentative ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ built inexorably to a volcanic conclusion.”
