The Cheese & Grain was packed for Frome Symphony’s spring concert, with a programme of popular Scandinavian works, writes BARRY FOGDEN.

Under the confident and accurate baton of conductor Mark Gateshill, the orchestra warmed up with Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s Helios Overture, an atmospheric piece depicting the trajectory of the sun from morning to night, with brooding brass and basses at the start, feverish activity at midday and tranquillity at dusk.

Then came a real highlight, as pianist Stephen Marquiss appeared to affectionate applause, for he was the man who started the orchestra as a Cambridge student and was its first conductor.

Stephen proceeded to give a mighty performance of Grieg’s ever-popular piano concerto, a work which he has clearly absorbed to the point where it simply flows from him with complete freedom of expression.

This is a concerto that requires close attention to its dynamics to be fully effective, and Stephen duly extracted every nuance, with thunderous fortissimos and the quietest, most sensitive sounds that a piano can produce.

The orchestra showed by its very attentive and warm accompaniment that it was not simply playing the notes but participating fully in Stephen’s interpretation, and the concerto was rewarded with a tumultuous ovation, with the soloist being called back several times.

The second half of the concert was given over to the mighty Fifth Symphony of Jean Sibelius, first performed almost 100 years ago.

This much-loved symphony packs a huge amount of musical content into a relatively short time, and makes huge demands on an orchestra, composed as it is of intricate ideas which are introduced, developed, passed round the ensemble, developed further, knitted together and built up until finally the whole construction bursts out in a blaze of light in the unforgettable, emotional finale.

That Frome Symphony now handles this kind of material with great aplomb shows what a classy outfit it is becoming under Gateshill’s guidance.

The Orchestra’s next appearance is on March 29 at the Cheese & Grain, when they join Frome Voices, conducted by Alan Burgess, to performed Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace.”