ARTEFACT, APRIL 1975

Of course, I know the famous Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra of old. In fact, I have in my hand a remarkable recording they made including a work of mine that I wrote for Stokowski and his virtuoso orchestra in Philadelphia.

I have often played this record to musicians and asked them which professional English orchestra they thought had recorded it. None got it right. They would not believe that it was a youth orchestra. And the thanks for keeping this orchestra, which continually changes, up to such a pitch of discipline and confidence are due to their inspiring trainer and conductor, Eric Pinkett.

SIR ARTHUR BLISS

LEICESTER MERCURY, JUNE 1975

Leicester’s Prom Week at the De Montfort Hall opened 1ast night with Eric Pinkett conducting the remarkably talented Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra with Lady Evelyn Barbirolli and Martin Milner as soloists.

The programme was an interesting one and worked well in practice. It began and ended with the full orchestra (Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet fantasy overture and Elgar’s Enigma Variations) and in between there was a reduction to chamber sized ensembles for the Max Bruch G minor violin concerto and the C minor double concerto for oboe and violin by Bach.

It is no secret that Martin Milner (co-leader of the Halle) admired the LSSO for their flexibility and awareness of response in accompanying his fine playing of the solo part. And this, indeed, was what could be heard; one felt these young players to be responsive and sympathetic listeners with the ability to adjust to musical situations as they arose.

Eric Pinkett's conducting clearly took this quality into consideration and so, especially in the slow movement the performance took on a pleasing sense of spontaneity and, too, did justice to the attractiveness of Bruch's scoring. Milner’s warmth of sound in the adagio was never indulgent and he, the conductor and the orchestra found a beauty of expression that was restrained and tasteful. In spite of its minor mode, the Bach double concerto is a gracious and amenable work. There was good rapport between the two soloists (Evelyn Barbirolli's breath control well in command of the oboe’s tortuously long paragraphs) and the small string ensemble were lively and adept in the outer allegro movements and managed the pizzicato accompaniment of the central adagio with pliancy and grace. It was interesting to hear the full orchestra’s response to another view of the Tchaikovsky overture - the last being under Myung-Whun Chung at Loughborough. In the larger De Montfort Hall, Eric Pinkett saw the work in spacious, romantic terms with blazingly fierce but well controlled sound for the battle scenes. His unhurried preparation for the first voicing of the love music was well judged, effective and typical of his panoramic approach.

The orchestra's string playing is now at a particularly high level, well matching the quality of the wind department which, in common with all young orchestras, showed quicker initial development. Elgar’s instrumentation allowed all sections to display their qualities in a particularly colourful and characterful projection of the diverse but lovable personalities who are immortalised in the Enigma variations. It is a work that demands affection as much as virtuosity and Eric Pinkett’s direction drew this needed sense of close involvement from his young players as well as giving the music shape and a satisfying time-scale.

The applause recognised the worth of the performance and a witty sparkling account of Khatchaturian's "Gopak" was the encore. - Ralph Pugsley

LEICESTER MERCURY, OCTOBER 1975

The triumph of a Leicester teacher and her girl pupils was shown to the nation last night. The battle to establish ballet as an 'O' level subject in an area where "it was more likely to get belly laughs than bouquets" made a touching and heart warming documentary on ATV.

Called 'Girl in a Broken Mirror' it showed how girls of New Parks School, Leicester – 11 plus failures - responded to the care, imagination and challenge of ballet. The school has now really been put on the map as far as ballet goes thanks to dance teacher Miss Mary Hockney. Because Miss Hockney introduced ballet into the school many of her star pupils are now being given the chance of hitting the big time, whereas they could easily have drifted into just another routine job.

The programme was mainly centred on 16- year-old Karen Hutton of 80 Pindar Road, Leicester. It showed her delight at being accepted by the Rambert School of Ballet and playing the leading part in the Lady of Shalott, performed for the first time in Europe at the Haymarket Theatre in May. The school's ballet pupils were filmed during their long rehearsals of the play set to music by Sir Arthur Bliss, played by the Leicestershire Schools' Symphony Orchestra.

The programme must have made parents feel that whatever school their daughter attends - and no matter her academic ability -she still has a chance of getting to the top. When interviewed Karen said: "When people watch me dancing, they don't know what my background is, what kind of home I come from. When I'm dancing, I'm learning beautiful things. When I come out, it

makes a difference. I could never go into a factory. I'd rather be the world's most professional layabout. I couldn't imagine sitting at a machine all day. I don't think I'm above doing it, I am the same class as everyone on the estate. Ballet to me is the most worthwhile thing I have ever done. Nothing else has any meaning at all."

And to further their national status the school's ballet students will be appearing on the Magpie children's programme tomorrow night. Karen, together with Rosemarie Taylor, Isla Bates, Alison Clay and Lynette Tout, will show viewers "some of the technical moves." The Leicester Mercury gave a full report or the film crew's activities last January when the £20,000 film was started.

LEICESTER MERCURY, DECEMBER 1975

Those angelic voices you will hear singing carols on television as you unwrap your presents on Christmas morning will belong to 400 local school children and the orchestral backing will be provided by another 100 boys and girls from Leicestershire. The carols will come from St. James the Greater Church of London Road, Leicester where at the beginning of December the 500 young music-makers, under the direction of Mr. Eric Pinkett, the county education department's senior principal music adviser, will gather to record the 45-minute programme for the BBC broadcast on Christmas Day morning.

Four hours of rehearsals and five hours of filming will go into the programme and the choir will be made up of the choirs of 14 county and city schools.

The orchestra will be the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra.

"Most of the carols will be traditional ones," says Mr. Pinkett, "with three modern tunes specially written for the programme".

LEICESTER MERCURY, FEBRUARY 1975

Leicestershire Schools' Symphony Orchestra, first in the field to put Havergal Brian's music on record, have produced another disc devoted to the music of this prolific and, up to now, neglected composer. Brian died in the Autumn of 1972 - a month or so before the original LP was issued. That record was judged to be one of the best classical issues of its year. The new one has qualities which are likely to make it equally valued. Its sound is good, the playing again a remarkable achievement by this young orchestra doing service with the shared conducting of Eric Pinkett and Laszlo Heltay to music of marked originality and fascination.

May I suggest, too, that the new record provides an accessible "key", so to speak, to a personal musical language that can at times be difficult to unlock. Play over Brian's 5th English Suite (Rustic Scenes) a few times and you have a rewarding and entertaining guide to his compositional style. The suite occupies the second side of the record with Pinkett conducting the LSSO and producing an excellent interpretation of music which, as Brian says, evokes memories of landscapes and country towns 60 or 70 years before it was composed in 1953. It is descriptive music which, however, goes much deeper than mere sound painting: the feeling of the opening Trotting to Market being far more profound than its title suggests. Reverie is a beautifully thought out elegy for strings, The Restless Stream a really extraordinary piece of writing for woodwind and percussion, and the final Village Revels a marvellously conceived impression of rural well being. Against a familiar background, Brian's characteristic "brush- strokes" are vividly comprehendable and yield new delights on each playing. His fondness for compression and juxtaposition of dissimilar ideas and textures are there in the Reveille to which the village awakes and in the tiny pastoral glimpse (solo oboe against strings pedal) that flashes by as the revelling mounts in excitement.

Compression is the essence of the Composer’s shortest symphony - No.22

(Symphonia Brevis) which opens the record’s other side with Heltay conducting.

The time scale is brief but the symphonic scope (huge, granite blocks of sound impress the ear) is amazingly grand. The other work involving tenor soloist and Brighton Festival Chorus, as well as the LSSO is the early setting (1901) of Psalm 23, an attractive work as Heltay demonstrates in his sympathetic direction.

LEICESTER MERCURY, JULY 1975

Next Wednesday, July 23, is an appropriate departure date for Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra who on the morning of that day, will set out from Birstall for their 23rd overseas tour. The destination this time is France - first to give three concerts at the Sceaux Festival in Paris and then on to Autun, where the orchestra will take part in the French National Choral Festival.

They will be joined in France by the celebrated pianist Myung-Whun Chung

who will give two performances of Beethoven's 4th concerto and who will also conduct the orchestra at one concert and composer Brian Kelly in the second Paris concert will direct his New Orleans Suite which he wrote as ballet music for Leicester's New Parks Dance Group and which was first heard at the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester, last May. The first concert of the tour, however. will take place in London on Wednesday evening at St. Pancras Assembly Rooms when the conductor will be Maurice Handford.

This event will be in the memory of the London journalist Caroline Nicholson who died about 18 months ago. It will, in fact, inaugurate a new trust in her name and the L.S.S.O. was the chosen orchestra because of Miss Nicholson's long admiration of it and Leicestershire's education plan in general.

Faure's "Elegy" is one of the concert’s items and the solo cellist will be Timothy Mason, elder son of Mr. Stewart Mason (former Director of Education for Leicestershire) and Mrs. Mason.

The orchestra will cross the channel on Thursday. The first of the three Paris concerts will feature Eleanor Cooke of Melton Mowbray as soloist in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with Eric Pinkett (the orchestra's founder and regular conductor) on the rostrum. He will accompany Myung-Whun Chung in Paris and in Autun Cathedral and when pianist turns conductor in a Paris concert will hand over the baton for performances of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet fantasy overture and Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony.

The National Choral Festival at Autun is sponsored by the European Federation of Young Choirs who every three years stage the international Europa Cantat which it is hoped will be held in Leicestershire next year. The Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra will provide the instrumental support in three big Festival events centred upon the Cathedra1. Laszlo Heltay (who has worked frequently with the L.S.S.O.) will conduct a mainly choral concert on August 1. Then, on succeeding nights, there will be performances of Brahm's Requiem with Pierre Cao conducting and Mozart's Coronation Mass under the Swiss conductor Willi Gohl. The orchestra leave France for home on August 4.

LEICESTER MERCURY, MAY 1975

I have grown to expect great things from the ballet group of New Parks Girls' School and from the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra but I was staggered nevertheless by the dramatic power, the beauty and the professionalism of last night's European premiere at the Haymarket Theatre of Sir Arthur Bliss's ballet, The Lady of Shalott. It was the principal item in a "Dance Mosaic" presentation which also included first performances of ballets especially written for the New Parks girls. Bliss has written a fine and compelling score for the famous Tennyson poem, sensitive to the events of the story and with music of tenseness and excitement to project the arrival of Sir Lancelot, for instance and for the traumatic moment when the mirror cracks "from side to side". (It did not seriously affect the impact of this point in the ballet that, with first-night obstinacy, the stage mirror resisted attack!). Mary Hockney's choreography, in turn, was intelligently alert to the diverse variety of moods and fancies in which the score abounds and combines with the music in evoking quite wonderfully the mystery, the joy, the youthfulness, the romance and the ultimate tragedy of the poem. How imaginatively the mirror image was exploited between the aloof solitary Lady and the onlookers. But not only has she created here a ballet of excellent quality, she has done so for a group of schoolgirls with a wide range in age and dance attainment and has trained them to perform before a theatre audience with all the poise, assurance, concentration and discipline of a mature company. The programme does not name the soloists so I can only praise by title the graceful and suitably remote characterisation of the Lady of Shalott, the captivating Page (one of Sir Arthur Bliss's extra roles), the good-time girl, and the excellently-sustained personification of the Curse, a convincing Lancelot and good support from a male contingent from Wreake Valley College. Eric Pinkett, conducting, paced the music really well and the playing of the LSSO was first class. In the first half, Douglas Young's The Listeners and Bryan Kelly's New Orleans Suite supplied an ideal contrast and served to demonstrate the versatility of Mary Hockney's choreographic ideas and of her girls dance skills. The first, based on a Walter de la Mare poem, is fascinatingly scored in contemporary style for instruments and voices and Miss Hockney responds with clever use in modern idiom of a full company of dancers incorporating solo counterpoint and some tellingly simple mass effects. The Kelly piece was staggeringly presented in cabaret style - band on stage and the girls and boys playing up sleazily and hip-swayingly to Latin-American rhythms, the blues, ragtime and a witty final burlesque preceded by a tenderly and charmingly done Spiritual. These were the specially written ballets: in addition there were Gymnopedies (two neatly-set dances, one a solo, to Satie's music) and Saint Saens's Danse Macabre in which, strangely, there was no hint of the gruesome apart from the lighting. The costumes (particularly for the Bliss Ballet) were very, very good - credit to Mrs. J. Hammond in charge of wardrobe.

M. J. Laxton designed the effective set for the main work and the readers were Simon and Penny Taylor.

Ralph Pugsley

LEICESTER MERCURY, MAY 1975

A chance conversation yesterday means that two of the most famous pianists of the younger generation will be taking part in tomorrow night's concert at Loughborough University when the orchestra will be the Leicestershire Schools Symphony.

But only one will be actually playing. Myung-Whun Chung, a member of the celebrated Korean family of musicians, will achieve a personal ambition by appearing as a conductor for the first time in public outside his own country.

The original plan was that he would direct the LSSO in Tchaikovsky's fantasy overture Romeo and Juliet and in Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony and then, after the interval, be the soloist in Beethoven's Emperor piano concerto.

He mentioned the concert and his conducting debut to Radu Lupu, who jumped

into international prominence by winning the 1969 Leeds piano competition. Lupu immediately replied: "Why not conduct the Beethoven is well? I'll play the solo part". Myung-Whun Chung was willing and Eric Pinkett, the orchestra's regular conductor, readily agreed to step down to make this unique double celebrity event possible. The concert will be held in the Edward Herbert building. A couple of years ago, it was Myung-Whun's sister, the violinist Kyung-Wha Chung, who benefited from co-operation from the County School of Music. At that time she was taking the second Bartok concerto into her repertoire and had the advantage of intensive rehearsals with the LSSO.

LEICESTER MERCURY, MAY 1975

The news that two internationally celebrated young pianists would be involved in a performance of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto drew a capacity audience to the Edward Herbert Building at Loughborough University last night.

The soloist was Radu Lupu (giving his services free), the conductor Myung-Whun Chung who was making his public debut as a conductor outside Korea, and the orchestra, the Leicestershire Schools Symphony.

The performance was as closely integrated as one would expect from the co-operation of two, friends with close musical sympathies. The solo part was beautifully played and mindful of the fact that, despite its title, much of the Emperor's dynamic level lies below mezzo-forte. A chamber-size ensemble helped the intimate approach which, though not lacking strength for the first movement's expansive gestures, matched the lovely scoring of the Adagio with delicacy of exchange between keyboard and orchestra and in the Rondo gracefully exploited the piquant harmonic flavouring of the music's adventuresome key-travelling. The direction was excellent and the orchestral response alert and sympathetic.

Further evidence to suggest that Myung-Whun Chung will be in demand as a conductor as well as a pianist was his gripping performance of Tchaikovsky's Fantasy Overture "Romeo and Juliet." He held the attention from the first note to the last and his skilled and disciplined handling of climaxes and his pacing of the work contained all the qualities of a story well told. The LSSO played marvellously for him and made possible, too, a bright, sunny and rhythmically alive account of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony under Mr. Chung's precise and clearly-intentioned beat. The final item was Khatchaturian's colourful and popular "Masquerade", well directed by the LSSO's founder and permanent conductor, Eric Pinkett.

Ralph Pugsley