It is rare to be present at the birth of a new orchestra, and rarer still when that orchestra turns out to be special. Chineke! – in Igbo, a language spoken in south-eastern Nigeria, the word refers to the spirit of creation of all good things – was chosen as the ensemble’s name by its founder, double bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku, who has familial roots in the region. Her creation, Europe’s first black and minority ethnic orchestra, made its debut in this Southbank concert.
Quite rightly, the programme – persuasively conducted by conductor, pianist and organist Wayne Marshall – included two works by black British composers. The first was the Ballade by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, whose music was greatly admired during the Edwardian era, and whose most famous score – the cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast – remained a choral society staple for decades.
Premiered at the Three Choirs festival in 1898, his Ballade is a dramatic and finely structured piece of real substance and imagination; its passionately lyrical second subject, in particular, gave the orchestra’s string section opportunities, which they seized. Their passionate playing had considerable tonal refinement.
Then came an Elegy, composed by Philip Herbert as a memorial to Stephen Lawrence, and scored for 18 strings – one for each year of the murdered teenager’s short life. Following in the tradition of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Gerald Finzi, Herbert’s finely crafted work was sensitively and touchingly delivered.
They followed with confident accounts of classics from the traditional canon: a strikingly characterful performance of Brahms’s Variations on the St Anthony Chorale and an exhilaratingly vital one of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Overall, this launch concert impressed not merely as the beginning of something culturally inspiring, but as a musical event of genuine artistic value.
