By Keith Warner

ON A weekend visit to Ripon, it was my good fortune to be in the large appreciative audience at the cathedral for the autumn concert given by the full orchestra in its 21st year, with the celebrated Kiev-born pianist Alexei Grynyuk as soloist in Rachmaninov’s 3rd Piano Concerto.

The programme began with Beethoven’s Overture to Goethe’s five-act play Egmont, the orchestra settling into a convincing performance where each section showed an impressive unanimity and musicality, but with notably sonorous strings.

The overture was followed by the evening’s star work for which a Steinway concert grand piano was hired. Here should be mentioned the acoustical problems of a piano with a large orchestra in a beautifully resonant building.

At times even the mighty tone of the Steinway almost failed to carry over the orchestral fortissimos. But having said that, the soloist gave a truly magnificent, Russian performance of this difficult work, accompanied well by the orchestra.

Grynyuk’s heartfelt performance was so well received that he played a Chopin Nocturne as an encore with exquisite delicacy and strength of tone – to the delight of the listeners.

Sibelius was the welcome choice for the second-half symphony, his Fifth in E flat, which he started to compose in 1914 – a year of great turmoil in Europe. Reworked from four to three movements, the main themes link the movements and featured wonderful colours from the woodwind before reaching a splendid climax with the superb St Cecilia horns leading the triumphant theme.

This excellent orchestra under conductor Xenophon Kelsey is to be congratulated on an evening of super music-making in a fine building.

Keith Warner