Here is a vital and fresh-faced contender in London’s professional orchestral scene. The fledgling Orion Symphony Orchestra is a healthy, glowing body of young professionals who strike the observer as being remarkably, refreshingly unjaded by the tenuous state of the arts and who generate a musical product which mirrors their freedom.
With uncanny ease and an uncommon maturity of string sound, this league of young musicians bore all hearts on sleeves for Monday night’s launch to their inaugural season in a programme entitled England Rediscovered. With the unruffled sincerity and deep-seated intuition of conductor Toby Purser, they cut straight to the core of British music and epitomized its spirit with the detached sentimentality and corseted nostalgia of all the best period drama.
Pushing through their pastoral harmonies with unquestioning confidence, it was all crispness of morning and dew on grass, with welcome absence of pomp and pageantry.
Their wholesome integrity seems inextricably tied to the blend of orchestral strings and generous viola contingent. The unfettered engagement of every player gave a sense of, rather than tiered sectioning, a collaborative throw of equally competent players, all leaders, all artists. Both tender and strident ensemble playing was refreshingly unaffected by soloistic symptoms, instead conjuring a living, breathing orchestral organism with an electricity and slightly aloof energy entirely its own.
Needless to say, world-class soloists Jamie Campbell and Jory Vinikour were highly sensitive to the group’s internal balance and each pencilled their own crystalline layer over the existing texture without need for accompanimental compromise.
I leave it to other reviewers to analyze the specific repertoire and instead offer this as a testimonial. This is a brave and inspired initiative by Toby and his team which warrants wholehearted support from the Arts community and its patrons at every level. Deservedly well-attended, this performance showed an orchestra already operating at a professional calibre and with a rumbling potential for more. And already having raised £500,000+ for charity, they’re poised for some great karmic return. Fearless Orion the hunter could well become London’s hero.
