Best of British

A clutch of stirring Empire songs, some G&S, a touch of Riverdance and a splash of the Edinburgh Tattoo were the ingredients for Queensland Pops Orchestra’s annual Best of British concert. Based on London’s famous Last Night of the Proms concerts which began in 1895, the local version has notched up 30 years since being established by Colin Harper in the 80s. The orchestra were joined by the massed choirs of the Resonance of Birralee, Toowoomba Contemporary Choral and Chapel Choir, the BBC Pipe Band, the Watkins Academy of Irish Dance, and soloists soprano Elizabeth Lewis and bass-baritone Sam Hartley, in this grand salute to all things British.

The combined choirs did an arresting acapella version of Sting’s “Fields of Gold”, Lewis charmed with “Down by the Salley Gardens”, a Yeats poem set to music, and Hartley impressed with his lower version of Handel’s castrato piece “Ombra Mai Fu”. The award-winning pipe band blasted the roof off the hall with their “Funky Amazing Grace” and the popular “Highland Cathedral”, whilst Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance Finale, and the traditional folk-tune “Red Coats” were in expert hands with the precision-drilled Irish dancers.

The statuesque Lewis had fun being impossibly coy with “Poor Wandering One”, whilst Hartley parodying Johnny Depp raised laughs in “I Am a Pirate King. But their biggest laugh-getter was “The Song That Goes Like This” from Monty Python’s Spamalot. With Lewis Brunnhilde-like towering over Hartley, who only came up to her armpit, it was a delicious comic doubling in the song whose multiple key changes brought laughs. Their later duet, “How Could I Ever Know” from The Secret Garden, was musical theatre at its best.

The orchestra came into their own with Vaughan Williams’s “English Folk Song Suite” No 3, a medley of 007 theme songs and Henry Wood’s “Fantasia on British Sea Songs”, with outstanding “Sailor’s Hornpipe” flute work by Michal Rosiak.

The concert concluded with the massed choirs and Hartley singing Hubert Parry’s “Jerusalem”, Lewis in full-sword and shield regalia on “Rule, Brittania” and a thrilling “Land of Hope and Glory” from Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance.

No Pops concert would be complete without podium maestro Patrick Pickett. With a Union Jack vest, some lame jokes, and a bucket of personality, he was the perfect host.

Peter Pinne