Page 346 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

21 November 2022

Review: The New World at

Philharmonic Hall ****1/2

Sacred music, nursery rhymes, a brave new world – and a generously populated
Philharmonic Hall enjoying it all.
Who needs the World Cup?
Domingo Hindoyan has not – so far at least – explored the rich landscape of the English
repertoire (his tastes lie mainly across the Channel), but with the Phil celebrating the
150th anniversary of Vaughan Williams’ birth, what better way to open a Sunday concert
than with the composer’s magical Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.
Vaughan Williams created a complicated intertwining of quartet, nine-strong chamber
group and larger orchestra all joining and dividing through the shifting sands of continual
time changes in this 20th century homage to 16th century antiphony.
Hindoyan crafted an beautiful expansive line through the changing dynamics, although
I’d have liked a little more shimmering poetic mysticism in the opening section.
The mystical was paired with the mischievous in the form of Erno Dohnányi’s Variations
on a Nursery Song, played with brio by young artist in residence Isata Kanneh-Mason,
visually sparkling too in a Sunday afternoon uniform of green sequined jumpsuit.
Dohnányi may be executing a musical jest with his dramatic orchestral pronouncements
being answered by five-year-old Mozart (prompting a ripple of laughter in the hall), but
it’s also an intricate one.