Trianon on Screen 2017 – Review

Fasten your seat belt, strap yourself in, dim the lights and off we go on another feast of musical travel with the Trianon Music Group which this time whisked us around on an evening of film and television classics.

The Group’s January concert, conducted by Christopher Green, is always packed with familiar pieces interlaced with a few less well-known but still recognised tunes to ensure the anticipation never wanes and is a Trianon trademark which always delivers.

Saturdays’s concert not only delivered, it came with a wow factor thrown in! From the pulsating opening sequence of Zadok the Priest, Bach’s Toccata in D Minor, and Beethoven’s Hallelujah the mood was set for a high octane performance by orchestra and choir sustained all evening and shown again with the March from A Bridge Too Far, the Warsaw Concerto from Dangerous Moonlight featuring Ipswich piano soloist Andrew Burke in masterful expressive form, a Glenn Miller medley where the musicians seamlessly transposed into dance band mode before reverting back to type with the selection finale from Mary Poppins.

More reflective movements were equally impressive and just as enjoyable. I particularly liked Ennio Morricone’s Nella Fantasia and The Mission, adapted from the film of the same name, which the choir sang most movingly. We were also treated to songs and medleys from Rodgers and Hammerstein, John Barry, Lerner and Loewe, Johnny Mercer and Cole Porter amongst others which the choir clearly enjoyed singing.

The themes from the television series of Lovejoy and Black Beauty (Galloping Home) were played in the presence of their Suffolk-based composer Denis King [at the piano, with Christopher Green], who also presented an enlightening pre-concert Q and A session to the early audience.

When leaving I heard someone remark that the evening was great stuff – Mary Poppins said it herself – it was supercalifragilistic!

Stuart Reid