Christmas Gala – Dewsbury Town Hall

Conductor: Garry Walker

The Kirklees Concert Season, in association with the Orchestra of Opera North, manages only one evening performance at Dewsbury: the Christmas Gala. Every year a differently constituted programme, though a handful of audience carols are always included. This year’s programme looked a bit messy on paper, but nothing could have been further from the truth: carefully curated by Music Director Garry Walker, it brought contrasts with coherence while building to a fun climax that found Opera North’s orchestra and chorus in top form.

The first half was relatively serious, if you can apply that word to Duke Ellington’s witty take on Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite – Sugar Rum Cherry, would you believe? It was as though at the outset Walker wanted to show that his orchestra can play anything. Well, it wasn’t the Ellington band – too many strings for a start – but with Stacey Watton’s walking double bass and Anthony Brown (saxes) and Charlie Ashby (drum kit) added to the forces it reproduced Ellington’s sound world perfectly on five of the Nutcracker pieces. Particularly impressive were the soloists who had to follow in the footsteps of the Duke’s men: a word for the trumpet, trombone, clarinet and bass clarinet, plus, of course, Brown’s saxes.

This was followed by six of Sasha Johnson Manning’s Manchester Carols to Carol Ann Duffy’s timeless, yet contemporary, words. Opera North Young Voices, augmented by some female members of the Opera North Chorus, showed their talent and discipline in gorgeously controlled versions of these always melodic, attractively strophic carols. The accompaniment was interesting, pianist Annette Saunders gently dictating the pattern for most carols, then the orchestra adding colour such as the evocation of shepherds’ pipe by violins and recorders on The Gold of Straw.

The second half consisted of no fewer than 14 pieces, with three audience carols interspersed among a wide variety of other material. At first a series of five carols from around Europe, several of them little known, were sung unaccompanied, with grace and accuracy, by the full Opera North Chorus. The first, the lovely Coventry Carol, and the final The Crown of Roses, Tchaikovsky at his most intense, bookended this set.

Then it was mostly fun till the end. The hats, Christmas jumpers and even one Santa Claus outfit came out and chorus and orchestra pulled out all the stops. The approach to carols, with the chorus attacking the material with full voice and the orchestral brass supporting them every inch of the way, could not be more different from that of church and cathedral choirs. Is it the influence of the operas? Or maybe it’s just the North?

A last group consisted of three pieces by Leroy Anderson. A Christmas Festival – basically a series of brief versions of carols – raised the roof, but it was the final Sleigh Ride, with the brass phrasing like a big band of the time, that topped the lot.

Reviewed on 19th December 2024