This was my first time going to see The Charnwood Orchestra, and to be fair, it has been a while since I watched a full orchestra play, and oh boy it did not disappoint!

Although a secret fan of classical music myself, what really got me excited when seeing the orchestra’s advert in the autumn edition of Barrow Voice, was its gift potential for my wonderful friend, who celebrated her 91st birthday in January, and whose favourite thing in the world is watching the Vienna Philharmonic performing their New Year’s Day concert on TV on January 1st every year.

After a lovely home-cooked meal on Saturday 13th January, we headed to the orchestra’s new year celebration concert, and were pleased that we were able to assist our friend to walk safely into the hall at Humphrey Perkins school.

My fi rst surprise was seeing just how much space a full orchestra takes up: only half the hall was audience space.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to conductor, Nic Fallowfield, explaining the stories of each of the musical pieces, as well as reading about musical history in the programme.

As the theme for this New Year’s concert was ‘dance’, the orchestra played a wonderful selection of melodies from 19th century composers, dedicating the second half almost exclusively to the Strauss family, with their evergreen waltzes and polkas. I am yet to meet a person not feeling enchanted when listening to The Blue Danube. Having this year’s Vienna concert still fresh in my memory, I felt pure joy being able to experience this beautiful piece of music live, and beautifully it was played too.

My favourite part was matching up the instruments and musicians, according to the list in the programme, giving myself a lovely bit of education on what each of the instruments look like and sound like. We were totally taken by the orchestra’s timpani player, who played every note with a huge grin on his face – which just matched the general atmosphere and joy of the concert and audience.

The evening concluded with the classic Radetzky March and in true Viennese style: with audience participation (I mean clapping along; in case you are not familiar with this tradition)!

We thoroughly loved the concert, had a truly joyous evening, and we are very much looking forward to the next one, for we will be visiting again.

Sarolta Batki