Manchester’s musical history is extensive and impressive. Ranging from the founding of the UK’s oldest professional symphony orchestra (the Hallé – founded in tandem with the UK’s oldest and largest specialist music shop, Forsyth Bros. Ltd.) in 1858, to the inauguration of the UK’s largest specialist music school (Chetham’s School of Music) in 1969, the city has a strong musical culture engraved on its soul. After several years of discussions and tireless effort, the Royal Manchester College of Music and the Northern School of Music finally amalgamated to form the new Royal Northern College of Music in 1972 – only a stone’s throw away from the University of Manchester, which still supports a thriving music department.
Presently occupying the same (but now much altered and extended) purpose-built premises as it did in those early days, a 40th anniversary celebration concert was given by the RNCM Symphony Orchestra – an exact replica of the same celebration concert given in honour of the college’s opening in 1972. Amusingly, the 1972 concert actually took place in the Town Hall, as the new RNCM Concert Hall in which we were seated tonight was unfinished. The programme consisted of the prelude to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Sir Arthur Bliss’ Music for Strings and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony no. 2, “A London Symphony”.
The concert opened with a brief speech by Clark Rundell (Head of Conducting), and commenced musically with the Wagner prelude conducted by Carlos del Cueto. It seemed a fitting choice of maestro to have del Cueto opening the concert, as he is Junior Fellow in Conducting at the RNCM. Del Cueto led the players in a weighty but deafening performance – a curious factor of the RNCM Concert Hall is the proximity of orchestra to audience; in some cases only a matter of a few feet separates the two, making balance awkward and dynamics a minefield. Impassioned and majestic with a ceaseless romantic flow, the orchestra settled into the work quickly and produced some fine playing, though I confess I wish del Cueto had investigated some of the subtler aspects of Wagner’s exposed woodwind passages with greater sensitivity, the whole piece seeming to start forte, continue forte, and end fortissimo.
Following ear-splitting Wagnerian beginnings, a work for strings by one of England’s now neglected but once important composers: Music for Strings by Sir Arthur Bliss (1891–1975). Bliss, one-time director of music at the BBC and Master of the Queen’s Music, once enjoyed regular performances but like many of his generation has now slipped into the twilight of England’s musical heritage. Tonight’s work, complex, difficult and taxing, was handled excellently by the RNCM String Orchestra, which Malcolm Layfield (Head of Strings) conducted with extraordinary zeal. The pages of the score in front of him were rarely glanced at, and Layfield clearly knew the piece inside out, drawing from the players a wonderfully phrased performance of music that deserves wider contemporary acclaim. The fact that the college chose to include this work in 1972 reveals a time when concert programmers included English music as not only a matter of duty to its indigenous composers, but because the music is good enough to sustain audience appreciation.