About a year ago QSO attempted another actor-meets-orchestra mash-up that I found profoundly frustrating. In that review, I wrote that “I’m aware that orchestras are keen to try things that aren’t just Another Performance of the Classics”, but nonetheless I have to wonder quite why QSO and Clerici are so determined to make this theatre/classical music combination work.

In any case, they’ve certainly come much, much closer to succeeding here. How? Well, the answer’s simple – John Bell. The unifying thread for this concert was Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and there’s surely no-one better to get in for some Shakespearean extracts than the founder of Bell Shakespeare himself.

John Bell. Photo supplied

The concert began with the Prelude from Honegger’s The Tempest H. 48. It’s an orchestral work-out for the players and Clerici with all kinds of colourful orchestration (the wind and brass in particular get lots of fun storm imitations), and how nice to hear anything from Honegger that’s not the overplayed-but-still-cool Pacific 231. Short and sharp, this was a nice opener to the performance.

Next up was selections from Sibelius’ Tempest Suite...