Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra - Modern Orchestra

Modern Orchestra

It was in the late 1970s that the orchestra first tackled a Mahler symphony – the first – though under a guest conductor. Butterworth notoriously allergic to this composer’s music!! At that time The Daily Telegraph produced a northern edition: it was edited by the well-known music critic and author, Michael Kennedy. He ran a weekly ‘Music in the North’ column and in one such edition he drew attention to the performance, noting that he would never have anticipated the day when an amateur orchestra would play a Mahler symphony. In singling out the Phil he was according it a well-deserved accolade.

Later years brought performances of Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, Elgar’s Falstaff, Debussy’s La Mer and Britten’s Four Sea Interludes – pieces which would have been regarded as ‘unplayable’ in earlier times. In 1989, after 25 years in office, Arthur Butterworth gave hints that he did not plan to go on indefinitely; but it was not until 1993 that he gave his final concert (choosing the same symphony, as it happened, as had Margaret Binns for her farewell concert as Leader in 1982 – Elgar’s First). His successor, Rupert D’Cruze was presented with a splendid inheritance.

Originally trained as a trombonist, (as principal trombone in the European Union Youth Orchestra he played under Abbado and Maazel), D’Cruze soon turned to conducting, winning prizes in competitions in Hungary and Japan in 1992. D’Cruze broadened the orchestra’s repertoire even further, showing an especial proclivity for the music of Gustav Mahler. There was a rhapsodic review of the Phil’s performance of the Sixth Symphony in 1995, and the First and Fifth were also performed under his leadership. In 1997 the orchestra gave the world premiere of All The Long Night Through, a commissioned piece from Bill Connor, for piano, percussion and orchestra. Perhaps the most impressive of the ‘firsts’ achieved by the orchestra under D’Cruze was the 1997 performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, reviewed in the Yorkshire Post in the following glowing terms.

‘… (this work) long feared by the best of performers, was undertaken with immense confidence and vigour. This performance worked because D’Cruze not only knew that score extremely well but succeeded in shaping its disparate sections into a satisfying whole…’

The years 2000 and 2001 saw the Phil produce a CD of significant performances whilst planning major concerts, including performances of Sally Beamish’s concerto for saxophone, The Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone, with John Harle as soloist and another huge Mahler symphony, his third. When John Harle was taken ill, a potential problem became the beginning of a new musical friendship when his place was taken by Jack Liebeck, in a performance of the Mendelssohn Violin concerto. “Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat “read the headline in the Huddersfield Examiner, and the reviewer commented “Clearly, members knew this piece but, to dust it down in one hour and give such a performance demonstrates the talent which the Huddersfield Philharmonic has in its ranks.” If this concert tested the abilities of the players, the plans for Mahler’s Third Symphony were to test the organisational ability of the orchestral manager and committee, jeopardised as they were by the sudden unavailability of Rupert D’Cruze. Happily, Nicholas Cleobury was both available and willing to take on the task and, such was the success of this enterprise, that the Phil had appointed him as their Principal Guest Conductor within two years. It is a working relationship that continues to this day and has attracted comments including:

‘Guest conductor Nicholas Cleobury paid the orchestra the supreme compliment of making no concession to its “amateur” status’

(Huddersfield Examiner 23 April 2001, review of Mahler concert).

‘Nicholas Cleobury turned what could have been a hairy experience into a convincing one, full of raw energy and glittering colour’

(Yorkshire Post, 22 April 2002, review of Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast).

The latter concert, featuring Huddersfield Choral Society, was dedicated to the memory of Maurice Wray, orchestral manager of the Phil for some eleven years and who had been the prime mover and shaker in bringing the two organisations together on stage. Sadly, Maurice had died just 2 months before the concert. Further memorable concerts conducted by Nicholas have included February 2005’s Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra and Tippett’s A Child of Our Time in November of the same year, as well as the closing concert of the Saddleworth Festival in June 2007.

By autumn of 2002 the Phil was auditioning for a new Principal Conductor, a process which was to take almost two years, but which resulted in the appointment of Natalia Luis-Bassa, a prize-winner in the Maazel-Vilar Conductor's Competition of 2002 and the first person in Venezuela to receive the B Mus in orchestral conducting. Natalia’s audition concert (February 2004) included a performance of Elgar’s Cockaigne overture and Elgar has remained at the heart of her continuing relationship with the orchestra. 2007 was the 150th anniversary of the birth of Elgar and the April performance of his second Symphony with the Phil won Natalia the Elgar prize. She followed this up by conducting the first performance of the work in Venezuela with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, with their principal conductor Gustavo Dudamel in the audience.

February 2008 saw a packed Town Hall, and heard the voice of Robert Powell as narrator in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, which the Huddersfield Examiner described as "utterly engaging and absorbing. Here was an opportunity for various sections of the orchestra to shine and, without exception….. they excelled."