Author: Darren Niman

Date: 17th March 2026

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Once again, another evening of great music was had and here are a few paragraphs and pictorial thoughts arising from last Sunday...

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Salford Symphony Orchestra

Conductor: Katherine Stonham

Soloist: Andrew Winter

Venue: St. Paul’s Church, Moor Lane, Salford.

Programme:

Beethoven – Violin Concerto in D, Op.61

Vaughan Williams – “A London Symphony”

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Right on your own doorstep, it is not hard to find something to entertain the good people of Salford and this evening was excellent value for money. It also just goes to show that you do not always need three works in a concert to leave you thoroughly satisfied; two will do and these two works in particular provided that formula.

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Beethoven’s Violin Concerto is so well established and popular that it is easy to assume that a competent soloist and orchestra will just rattle through it knowing every note and nuance, but all is not what it seems. You must treat every note of it with due respect and concentration. As Soloist Andrew Winter told me, it is a very difficult concerto to play in terms of changes of tempo, dynamics, range, positions, double-stopping and the rest of it. It is usually referred to as the King of Violin Concerti and we must take a bow to it, as Andrew and the Team behind him did, and a thoroughly well-deserved bow at that.

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He was outstanding and so were the Salford Symphony Orchestra. Brilliantly led by long serving Leader Jon Henderson who is an accomplished teacher and performer all over the country.

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Our Conductor for the evening, Katherine Stonham is an highly accomplished figure in musical circles, becoming a Graduate of the GRNCM/MusB “Joint Course” run between the RNCM and the University of Manchester, not only Conducting but teaching for MAPAS in Salford, delivering individual, whole class and ensemble tuition for schools across the city. She is currently the Principal Conductor of the Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra since May 2022. I sincerely hope that she is made aware of this post.

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Following a generous interval and nice hot cup of tea, we were treated to an highly credible and worthy performance of “A London Symphony”, a work which not only portrayed London’s apparent sights, sounds and moods, but how the city was viewed through the eyes of an artist, what it meant to the people, in a world which was changing. Starting off with a quiet introduction, we are taken on a journey which triggers the vivid imagination. We hear and see the hustle and bustle of the city, the traffic, the people, the Westminster Chimes from the Clock Tower, a Lavender Cry, Hansom Cabs doors being slammed shut, mouth organs and mechanical pianos. … and after an impassioned and agonizing climax of despair and resignation, there is a quiet Epilogue, inspired by the last chapter of H. G. Wells's novel Tono-Bungay:

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“The last great movement in the London Symphony in which the true scheme of the old order is altogether dwarfed and swallowed up ... Light after light goes down. England and the Kingdom, Britain and the Empire, the old prides and the old devotions, glide abeam, astern, sink down upon the horizon, pass – pass. The river passes – London passes, England passes.”

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If ever there was an emotional ending to a Symphony, saying farewell to a world which would never be the same again in 1914, the very year in which this Symphony received its premiere, this is it, one which stands alongside that of Elgar’s 2nd Symphony, with its lingering sunset coda premiered only three years earlier. All this has added poignancy considering the troubled world we now live in, with never ending conflicts over land and religion, a world where we really do not know which direction it is going. Even the supposed march which opens the fourth movement after an agonizing diminished 9th interval seems to suggest a glory which has long passed its sell-by date, an Empire on the outside, but crumbling away on the inside…. Like a bright, shiny red Apple, looking delicious on the outside but absolutely rotten to the core.

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I feel that there were a few lumps in people’s throats as the Symphony’s Epilogue made its journey down that cold, murky River Thames, in its day a very busy working thoroughfare with paddle‑wheel passenger steamers, cargo steamers, lighters and tugs, municipal dredgers, and a wide range of coasters and barges moving freight… It was the M6 of its time, on Water.

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This Symphony, like the Concerto which preceded it, is by no means an easy work to programme; it requires a very large orchestra and much hard work. Vaughan Williams really throws the tempo all over the place at times, changes the mood constantly in an ever changing palette of colour and sound. Everybody in the Orchestra delivered the goods in a challenging work requiring utmost concentration throughout, helped by everybody in the ‘Kitchen’, who had more drums, pots, pans, bits and pieces than a Celebrity Masterchef set.

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Even for this concert, with a one page programme containing sufficient information for the keen concert goer, the artwork produced was really effective, encompassing the whole concept of the concert. We have the Half-Violin on the left, turning into the Clock Tower, Tower Bridge and the London Eye on the right, and a little imagination could then combine them into the outline of the human ear, where all these beautiful sounds enter. This was indeed an exercise in Listening, a stroke of genius, so congratulations to the publicity and marketing team for that one; you really do get bums on seats with work such as this.

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It is an interesting (and rather sobering) thought when we consider what was about to burst forth in 1914 in a changing world bearing in mind the image on the concert programme. History, as we all know, has a nasty habit of repeating itself simply because nobody Listened the first time. All this music goes in not one ear, but two.

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Were we not made with Two ears and One mouth for a reason by our Creator, to Listen more than we talk? That’s the theory, could it catch on?

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After the concert, one member of the orchestra commented on the last few moments of the symphony, marked in the score as Tranquillo, suggesting calmness and how he wished that the world would reflect that. Very apt.

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This was well worth a trip up the road on a cold, wet Sunday night and 5pm was a good time to start.

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Thank you very much, everybody at the Salford Symphony Orchestra and Simon Caplan who does so much behind the scenes and all the staff at St. Paul’s, Moor Lane.