Music / Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz, National Capital Orchestra directed by Louis Sharpe. At the Snow Concert Hall, December 1. Reviewed by MICHAEL WILSON.

Under the baton of the National Capital Orchestra’s music director Louis Sharpe, the ensemble bulked up to 70 players for its final concert of the year. 

Sharpe is a very competent conductor and also an engaging master of ceremonies. Explaining and illustrating each piece in the program with humour and flair – and without notes – the audience left better educated as well as entertained. 

Miriam Hyde is well-remembered in the pantheon of Australia’s notable creators and music educators. Her Happy Occasion Overture (1957) is written in three distinct sections, and allowed the NCO’s brass and woodwind sections to flex their muscles with excellent balance and tone, after which the oboes led a lilting passage leading into a rhythmic and compelling march driven by rich-sounding strings. 

Next was the Sonata for Viola and Orchestra (1919) by English-born composer Rebecca Clarke. In three movements, soloist Alina Zamfir at different times led, accompanied and followed the orchestra through this complex work in a confident and masterful style. 

At certain moments in the first allegro movement, the orchestra overwhelmed the mellow sound of Zamfir’s instrument, but balance and precision improved over time. The second movement was impeccably executed by soloist and orchestra. Then the final adagio saw Zamfir evoke a dark and gravelly tone, followed by frequent modulations in the orchestra, concluding with a dramatic thunder clap delivered by four timpani. 

The background to Symphonie Fantastique (premiered in 1830 to divided reviews) is frankly disturbing. It traces Berlioz’s unhealthy obsession with actress Harriet Simpson, through opium-addled dreams of a surrealist ball, calmed for a period by a pastoral scene, before an imagined murder and a march to the scaffold by the crazed suitor. The symphony concludes with a funeral scene attended by dancing witches. While Simpson finally agreed to marry Berlioz in 1833, the union lasted only a decade.

Although scored for 90, the NCO’s 70 was perfectly adequate and beautifully balanced. The Snow Concert Hall is acoustically ideal for an orchestra this size. Dramatic rising and falling motifs in the first movement were executed with an effect of relentless forward motion, Sharpe sometimes half a beat ahead to keep the orchestra moving. 

The fevered ball followed, with the waltz’s three-quarter time interrupted periodically by jolting time signature changes, keeping the listener on edge and overlaying familiar order with cacophony. 

The scene In The Country included sublime solo passages from the NCO’s oboe, clarinet and flute contingents, concluding with the thunderous four timpani and other percussion. 

The March to the Scaffold was eerie and ominous, with woodwind in the minor key, and a lurching between motifs perhaps speaking to the churning stomach of the condemned man. 

The finale, A Witches Sabbath, was articulated effectively as a chaotic and hysterical scene, with the woodwind at the top of their range, unhinged wailing and bells tolling menacingly from offstage. 

Finishing with rising and falling waves of sound, a series of full orchestral cadences brought the work to a grand, brassy and percussive finale, drawing unbridled and deserved audience applause. 

Executing this daring program with such flair and competence would have been beyond many community orchestras, but the NCO was up for the challenge, and delivered.