Reviews

	The Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra "NPO, a jewel in the region." Nottingham Evening Post "Nottingham is fortunate to have a home-grown orchestra of such calibre." Nottingham Evening Post "It is good to see the Nottingham Philharmonic so firmly maintaining its premier league status." Nottingham Evening Post "Another musical triumph for the NPO at Southwell." Mansfield Chronicle "Readers of this column will be well used to the orchestra's high standards being praised. This concert was another in a long line of major achievements." Nottingham Evening Post "This was a barnstorming performance...it deserved and earned the highest acclaim. Mr Murphy's band does the city proud." Newark Advertiser
	June 2004 - Show was a dream William Ruff, writing in the Nottingham Evening Post Elgar's exuberant Cockaigne Overture packs a pretty impressive punch, even under normal circumstances. But if you have the Minster's organ available to add even more splendour to the work's conclusion, the effect is so surprising and so stirring that the rest of the NPO's programme could have been a bit of an anticlimax. Not a bit of it. For anyone with a love of English music the programme was a dream. Jacques Cohen directed Elgar's Sea Pictures with such sensitivity to the Minster's acoustics that the tricky problem of balancing one soloist against a large orchestra was achieved with apparent ease. It would have been a crime to smother soprano Phyllis Cannan's performance, since it was so subtle, dramatic and inspirational that I felt frustrated not to have armfuls of red roses to throw in her direction at the end. Job - A Masque for Dancing, based on the Old Testament story, is one of Vaughan Williams' most colourful scores. And it was made to seem even more so by the projection on to a large screen not only of the Blake watercolours which had so inspired the composer but of other related images too. Here was a marriage of the arts surely made in Heaven, so where better to celebrate it than Southwell Minster?
	May 2004 - Orchestra comes of age Peter Palmer, writing in the Nottingham Evening Post When the Royal Concert Hall was first opened, the city quashed any idea of launching a professional orchestra to go with it. Was it that the council foresaw what the Nottingham Phil would achieve by the time of its 30th anniversary? There are still a handful of pieces it prefers not to tackle, but you can't ask much more of any orchestra, either salaried or voluntary, than a work of the scope of Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony. Unlike most professional counterparts, the Nottingham Phil rehearses over a period of weeks. Details have time to sink in. On Saturday the players were equal to every nuabce and accent proposed by their music director Jacques Harry Cohen. Conducting the symphony by heart, he drew emotional power, dramatic conviction and remarkable rhythmic finesse. As to Dvorak's great Cello Concerto, the orchestra and their soloist Leonid Gorokhov combined in a performance of sheer enchantment. This unshowy artist let his cello speak for him, magically so. The Nottingham Phil merits full houses. Surely it's time that the city actively promoted it.
	March 2004 - In musical dreamland Peter Palmer, writing in the Nottingham Evening Post The Nottingham Phil' was painting pictures in sound in its weekend concert of French music. The three orchestral pieces were in three different styles, but each had dreamy elements to it. Debussy's Prelude a l'apres midi d'un faune is a summery alfresco vision. Ravel's Piano Concert in G has its roots in a Basque Rhapsody which the composer planned to play on an American tour. And dreasms are inextricable from base reality in that epic from an earlier age: Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. Paradoxically, his very dreaminess needs the utmost precision to achieve its effect. Neil Thomson, Saturday's guest conductor, came with a big reputation in this regard. Under his baton the orchestra produced a shimmering canvas of vivid tableaux... from a lover's passionate soliloquy via urban and pastoral scenes to the garish March to the Scaffold and final witches' orgy. In the Debussy piece, which opened the evening, the laid-back music was allowed ample time to breathe. With its darting and chasing outer movement's, Ravel's concerto could not have offered a greater contrast. Soloist Vladimir Ovchinnikov conjured glittering rhythms with jazzy inflections.
	January 2002 - Roll play is family fun... William Ruff, writing in the Nottingham Evening Post, January 29th 2002 The NPO scored at least two firsts on Saturday night. I've never seen anyone play a roll of Sellotape before, and I can't remember another concert at which a group of Star Trek aliens were on hand to say goodbye at the end. The successful family concert must be a tricky event to bring off. It's relatively easy to appeal either to children or to grown-ups on their own, but how to appeal to both in one concert? On Saturday the NPO found a winning formula. There was (as always from this source) plenty of fine playing. A lot of care went into choosing the pieces, so classical pieces from Vaughan Williams, Saint Saens, Bizet, Grieg and Falla rubbed shoulders with some very tuneful selections from My Fair Lady and Star Trek. Whatever they played had the same high polish and attention to detail. Ensemble was tight, and there was some distinguished solo playing throughout, notably from leader Janet Hall (the deft fiddler in Danse Macabre) and flautist Alison Dennison in music from Carmen. Conductor Jacques Harry Cohen directed with his usual insight and energy. Paul Bradley was the perfect compere for the evening. Whether teiling jokes, reciting terrible poems, dressing up in funny hats, or playing his roll of Sellotape, he was clearly having the time of his life. His enthusiasm was infectious and, for the many children in the audience, he helped to make classical music seem a lot of fun. If you tune in to BBC Radio Nottingham at the Easter weekend you will be able to hear the recording.
	January 2001 - It's another Family Favourite Peter Palmer , writing in the Nottingham Evening Post, January 29th 2001 Robert Powell, star of Ken Russell's Mahler film, took on a lighter and more cheerful persona in his city concert appearance at the weekend. Not that Roald Dahl's Little Red Riding Hood lacks sobering moments. But with several irreverent quotes from Beethoven, Wagner and others, Paul Patterson's music makes clear it's all firmly tongue in cheek. Powell elaborated with panache on the narrator's role he filled at the premiere. Donning green waistcoats to suggest the backdrop, the Nottingham Philharmonic played with precision and relish under the baton of Paul Murphy. This was Murphy's last family concert as music director of the NPO. The audience will remember him not least in his aviator's get-up for the Thunderbirds theme. The slick lighting was complemented by the orchestral standards throughout. The players gave a fine lilt to the waltz from Khachaturian's Masquerade suite. The intermezzo from Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana was beautifully projected by the strings. A James Bond sequence featured four different composers, and Paul Hart's Jingle Kings was a vast menu of classical tunes used in advertisements. Philip Smith's clarinet excelled in the overture to Gershwin's Strike up the Band and in the famous start-up to Rhapsody in Blue. Matching the enthusiasm of conductor and presenter, Jack Gibbons effervesced at the piano.
	May 2000 - Capturing a Sound-World Atmosphere William Ruff , writing in the Nottingham Evening Post, May 9th 2000 There may have been some people in the NPO's audience who had come only to hear Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. If so, they will not have been disappointed with soloist Janice Graham's performance. This was a real dialogue with the orchestra, the soloist's sweetness of tone beautifully matched by the orchestra, which never threatened to overwhelm the often intimate nature of the music. The programme offered a chance to hear two relatively unfamiliar pieces too, and such was the NPO's advocacy of them that it is a wonder that they are not performed more often. The tone poem, Tapiola, by Sibelius is a sometimes terrifyingly powerful work which conjures up dark northern forests within which dwell the god Tapio and his attendant spirits. The NPO's performance vividly evoked the huge trees and the snow covered expanses. Every detail of Sibelius' sound-world was captured in a perceptive reading in which the music's silences and shadows seemed just as potent as its portrayal of the wildest storm. Under the direction of Paul Murphy, the performance had plenty of atmosphere as well as clarity and firm rhythmic control.
	March 2000 - NPO, a Jewel in the Region William Ruff , writing in the Nottingham Evening Post, March 21st 2000 The NPO has a special affinity with the passionate melancholy of Russian music. He conducted the willing packed house in a rumbustious three-part invention of his own devising. The orchestra's playing of Liadov's unfamiliar Kikimora, a haunting piece which describes an imp from Russian folk tales, was enticing, with richly coloured wind solos (notably for cor anglais) and silky richness from the strings. This same orchestral richness was heard in Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto in which the soloist was Philip Fowke. All the players, under the imaginative direction of Jacques Harry Cohen, took nothing for granted and something fresh emerged from a perhaps over-familiar work. There was the same thoughtful approach to Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony. Nottingham is fortunate to have a home-grown orchestra of such calibre. The concert was in aid of MacMillan Cancer Relief.
	January 2000 - Alan's 'Sound Force' Peter Palmer, writing in the Nottingham Evening Post, January 25th 2000 Presenter Alan Titchmarsh made his personal contributions to the Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra's family concert on Saturday. He conducted the willing packed house in a rumbustious three-part invention of his own devising. He also took it upon himself to play the triangle in the Dance of the Hours. The resulting shenanigans suggested the birth of a promising double act with conductor Jacques Harry Cohen. More seriously, the BBC's popular gardening guru narrated most fervently John Hort's linking script for a suite from Prokofiev's balletic masterpiece, Romeo and Juliet. Cohen, standing in for Paul Murphy, appreciated the heightening of expressive nuance that the Royal Concert Hall fosters. The first section of Eric Coates' Dambusters March took to the skies from the start. The virtuosic demands of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, heard in Stokowski's extravagant orchestration, were neatly met. The players excelled again in the ballet morsels which followed. Together with the Polovtsian Dances from Borodin's Prince Igor, they made the best possible trailer for the NPO's Russian evening under Cohen's direction in March.