The Spirit of Christmas

I doubt the Queensland Symphony Orchestra have had as much fun letting their hair down since Queensland Ballet’s Strictly Gershwin earlier in the year.With maestro Simon Kenway waving the baton, they raced through this annual pot-pourri of Christmas songs, carols and religious works with musical flair and enthusiastic abandon.

Not only were they the glue that held the whole performance together, they added the sparkle. No matter how many times we’ve heard Leroy Anderson’s jaunty “Sleigh Ride” it still captures Christmas like very few other light orchestral pieces, likewise James Curnow’s “Fanfares and Flourishes,” based on Charpentier’s Te Deum, always excites with its pageantry and pomp colour and its brass virtuosity.

Highlights also included “Christmas Symphony” a new work composed by choral director Timothy Sherlock and sung by the combined choirs and orchestra, and a beautiful and striking arrangement of “Silent Night”.

Popular musical theatre performers David Harris and Amanda Harrison blended well on the joyous “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and brought laughs with “Aussie Jingle Bells, an “ocker” slant on the traditional tune. They also became warmly parental and entered into the spirit of “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”, where in the Spirit of Christmas tradition multitudes of kids come up on stage and sing-along with reindeer antlers on their heads.

Griffith Musical Theatre graduate Kate Yaxley brought passion and a stunning vocal to “Grown up Christmas List”, The Great South East’s Sofie Formica was a pleasant and pretty host, whilst Julia McRae’ “Pie Jesu” segued into an appropriate message of peace for the season delivered by Archbishop Mark Coleridge.

Peter Pinne