Half a dozen cuddly cats, a smattering organutans and a legion of teddy bears of all shape and hue crowded into St. James together with their human companions to hear the Guernsey Cameratas’ Musical Menagerie.
The conductor, Richard Dickins, introduced the concert with great gusto and enthusiasm; whipping up an air of excitement before even the first string was struck.
A stirring drum roll announced the start of Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie). Querulous passages from the violins alternated with powerful surges of brass, ploughing all before it. A childlike giggle in my left lug hole let me know the concert was on the right tracks.
Volunteers were called upon from the audience to help conduct choruses of cats and dogs in Leroy Anderson’s The Waltzing Cat. St. James was filled with the barks and meows of the audience while the violins lead the waltz on stage, mimicking a cat’s song in a wonderfully lush and musical way.
As the last yelp died away the action moved from cats to elephants, with Gilbert Vinter’s The Playful Pachyderm. Jean Owen on bassoon captured the feel and movement of an elephant. It may be difficult to imagine an elephant skipping, but Jean bought the image to life as the pachyderm splashed through puddles and indulged in all sorts of elephantine naughtiness, backed by an orchestra swelling with the joy de vie of a 1930s film score.
Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit by Darius Milhaud gave the orchestra an opportunity to display their technical brilliance. Assured, off beat playing gave this piece a great jazzy feel, while techniques such as col legno (the bouncing of the backs of the strings’ bows against the string) made this a fascinating performance.
After a short break for juice and biscuits we returned to join in hunt with Haydn’s La Chasse. The horns announced the arrival of the hunt with a grand, regal fanfare and the strings powered forward, galloping after the prey. The orchestra played tightly together, with a stately precision; the music gradually falling away to a single flute as the hunt rode off into the distance.
Richard Dickins was joined on the podium by another two young volunteers to help conduct Ernest Bucalossi’s Grasshoppers’ Dance. The orchestra followed Dickins instruction to ‘keep it light’. Delicate violins were joined by a stabbing flute, while the scratching tones of the guiro kept time throughout.
Next came the piece I suspect many of my stuffed companions had been waiting for; the Teddy Bears’ Picnic by John W Bratton. As the first notes sounded the hall erupted in a mass of bouncing fur. Beneath the music you could hear throughout the hall an insistent muttering of the words to the song, as the beat of the timpani led us all marching down to the woods.
Once we had all calmed down we were treated to several movements from Debussy’s Children’s Corner. Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum was intended as a fun piano finger exercise and had a floating, melodic air: the flutes and oboes bubbling up through the languorous tones of the strings. The Serenade à la Poupée was opened by the violins with poised, music box pizzicato, a magical mood which alternated with expansive and moving playing from the lower strings. The series finished with the Cakewalk. The sheer funk of the Cakewalk, with its leering trumpets and rolling lower strings formed a stark contrast to the preceding numbers.
The Cakewalk warmed the audience up for the final piece; Henry Mancini’s The Pink Panther. The podium was packed with young guest conductors invited from the audience by Richard Dickens, while others hit the dance floor. This was seriously jazzy stuff, with the wonderful surge of the orchestra pierced by spiked trumpets, the riff of an electric guitar and that iconic motif from the double bass.
A well chosen programme, performed with great skill and made accessible through Richard Dickins’s enthusiastic interaction with the audience. We left St. James in time for tea followed by some rather excited little teddy bears.
