Welcome to NEO

From Nigel Swinford
Artistic Director and Principal Conductor

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the Friends’ Magazine which is once again burgeoning with fresh insights into the workings and adventures of the NEO. Thank you so much for your unstinting support of the Orchestra, even though so many of our concerts have been conducted abroad in recent
times. Nevertheless, it looks as though there will be some exciting performances this year in Guildford, Wolverhampton, Northampton and Rawtenstall at the very least.

Sue Rawlings told me recently that a number of you were asking when the NEO would be able to re-visit your own home patch. These days, we mainly go where we are invited, so if there is a body of people in your neck of the woods who would like the NEO to come for a concert,
please ask them to contact Julie Fry, who will send all the details of our Invitation Concerts. Having said all that, we are planning one large event at Birmingham Town Hall on January 17th next year, so if you are anywhere near the middle of the country, please watch out for that!

If you are interested in the Recreatio form, which we have been doing in Europe since 2004, and which you can read about in this magazine, do come along to St. Saviour’s Church, Guildford on 10th May where you will see an expanded version of the genre full of life and bounce!

If you do happen to accompany the NEO abroad, you will be interested to know of our plans once again to visit the Salzburg Festival this year (concerts from 31st July to 7th August inclusive) and Rome (22nd to 25th September). We hope to see some of you there!

My hearty thanks go to all those who have contributed to another lovely magazine which I suspect you will richly enjoy.

With best wishes, Nigel

The Aula Concert, Salzburg 2007

There are some times when the lowering of instruments and the closing of singers’ lips is too loud in the reverent silence following a piece. There are some times when the thunder of hands in applause and noise of feet on the floor is too quiet in celebrating the performance. So it was in the concert at the Aula, the unexpected, unplanned Aula. Unplanned, at least, by human minds. Having been apparently double-booked at the Residenz, the NEO was unexpectedly moved to the Aula concert hall by the Festival. This put the New English Orchestra in direct competition with the opera Der Freischutz at the most prestigious of venues, the Festspielhaus, and the contrast could not have been greater.

See Opus 18 for the full article

2006 Advent Tour

Rob Chidley takes us back to the close of
2006 when we performed 4 concerts in Lindfield (Sussex), Canterbury, Liverpool Hope University and Bolton.

The Hallelujah Chorus at Lindfield was the
best I’d ever heard from the NEO. There are
always thousands of variables that affect how each person in the audience reacts to the NEO: what do they expect from the concert; do they know the NEO; how far had they travelled that day; were they stressed or relaxed; how do the feel about the rogramme? And so on. I had high expectations of the NEO because I know them as friends as well as wonderful performers. I had travelled a few hundreds miles that day, I was tired, and I’d had a stressful week. I was ready to receive. Stood at the back, tucked behind the last row in what was more of an alcove than a
suitable seating area, I felt like how one
imagines jet aircraft pilots to feel when the sonic boom kicks in. If you can believe me, this
rendition was extra-extra-terrestrial. I am sure
that the faces of those in the front row were
quite a picture! None of the NEO knew the
individual stories of the audience members, so it was gratifying to see hands raised, ready for applause, long before the last note. The singers said that the audience visibly melted over the course of the concert: serious, proper faces thawed into delighted smiles. How often has that been the case when the NEO performs to expectant ears?

See Opus 18 for the full article.

All roads lead to...

Rome in September is hot – very hot – but much cooler than in August – a welcome change after the indifferent summer we had experienced. There was great excitement as most of our 20 strong group met up at Manchester airport on Sunday afternoon for our blitz on Rome – arrive Sunday evening – 3 concerts a day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then back home almost before we could digest what had happened. It was a remarkable tour in a remarkable place. If I had to pick one word to summarise Rome it would be ‘scale’ – nowhere is the phrase monumental more apt. There are so many buildings that dwarf our national monuments – an expression of the supreme confidence of the now faded Roman Empire. Another key word would be ‘tourist’ – like Salzburg during festival time the world comes to Rome – all nations gather around Rome’s many honey pots – one of which is the Trevi Fountain in the church adjacent to which we performed our Recreatios, first introduced in Salzburg in 2004. Recreatio means ‘time of refreshment’ and our publicity was geared at the leg-weary tourist fending off the ubiquitous sellers of junk who pounce on their victims as soon as they stop moving…

See Opus 18 for the full article.

Please note that these pdf files will take a short while to download as each one contains the full OPUS magazine. The resolution of the photos has been reduced to reduce the file size and this affects the quality of some of the images you will see.

OPUS 6 – Spring 1997 OPUS 7 – Autumn 1997 OPUS 8 – Spring 1998 OPUS 9 – Autumn 1998 OPUS 10 – Spring 1999 OPUS 11 – Winter 1999	OPUS 12 – Spring 2000 OPUS 13 – Winter 2000/01 OPUS 14 – Summer 2001 OPUS 15 – Summer 2002 OPUS 16 – Winter 2003/04 OPUS 17 – Autumn 2005 OPUS 18 – Spring 2008

The above documents are in pdf format. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader, please download by clicking on the graphic.

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