THEY know how to be light-hearted, the ESO players. Their tongue-in-cheek Facade concert (yes, inspired partly by composer William Walton) was a perfect demonstration of how music can tease itself.
From the outset, the audience must have known that this was one event that you couldn’t take seriously. The clowning, from Ben Humprey’s and Simon Renshaw’s voices, and from cellists Peter Adams and Corrine Frost left the audience obviously tickled.
Numbers like Mad Dogs and Englishmen (Noel Coward) and the theme to Agatha Christie’s Poirot can never be taken entirely seriously and neither could the verbal banter that was obviously well rehearsed by the cellists, conductor and singers.
This concert was one of the highlights of the Worcester Festival because of its ability to tease.
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