Nicholas Carter, conductor

Paddington Town Hall, Sunday March 6

Berlioz Symphonie fantastique

Weber Overture to ‘Oberon’

Demersseman Introduction and Polonaise for Ophicleide and Orchestra

The improvements in this orchestra since its first outing last year are notable, primarily due to conductor Nicholas Carter’s ever-strengthening grasp of his craft. He has a clear beat; cues entries decisively and only occasionally falls into the old trap for young conductors of using both hands simultaneously to keep time. His tempi are excellent and his style often graceful. Under his direction the orchestra played with commitment and energy.

The orchestra’s remit is to perform music of the Romantic era in a style as close to the original as research and intelligent guesswork allows, reviving some near-obsolete instruments such as the serpent and the ophicleide. This type of musical research has been developing for the best part of 70 years, primarily in the fields of early and Baroque music. In the main, the movement largely ignored the Romantic period; musicologists tended to leapfrog the era with disdain, landing in the mid-twentieth century. It often seemed that the cosy relationship between the adherents of these disparate periods meant that much of the music written, from Schumann through Tchaikovsky to Richard...