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Northern Chamber Orchestra
Artistic Director and Leader, Nicholas Ward
Season 2011 - 2012
The magnificent Northern Chamber Orchestra - hugely supportive from those first labour intensive rehearsals through to the last night. Mary Plazas, Buxton Festival 2011
The Northern Chamber Orchestra was formed in the 1960s and has gained a formidable reputation from its engaging and exciting concerts, tackling a wide range of repertoire from Corelli to Stravinsky and beyond. The members of the orchestra are distinguished chamber musicians who play as principals with other orchestras and regularly appear as soloists.
The NCO gives a series of eight concerts at the Heritage Centre, Macclesfield and appears in Skipton, Settle, Blackburn, Tatton Park (Knutsford) and in the Warrington area. We are the only professional orchestra who gives regular concerts in Cheshire East.
This season’s engagements include concerts for ‘Orchestras Live’ at Shrewsbury (Shropshire Music Trust) and Beverley, Keswick (Keswick Choral Society), Sheffield (Sheffield Oratorio Chorus) and Hoghton Tower (near Preston).
Amongst the soloists featured during the season are Martin Roscoe, Raphael Wallfisch, Jonathan Scott, Nicholas Daniel (Beverley), Naomi Atherton, Nicholas Ward, Richard Muncey and two youngsters from Chetham’s School of Music, Peter Moore and Mathis Picard.
The orchestra’s long association with Buxton Festival continues in July 2012, where again the NCO will be the
‘orchestra in residence’ - accompanying the festival’s main opera productions - Richard Strauss’s Intermezzo and a
double bill of Rimsky-Korsakov and Sibelius.
‘Andrew Greenwood drew consistently stylish playing from the Northern Chamber Orchestra’
(Financial Times, Buxton Festival)
On the recording front...Our CD of Malcolm Arnold’s Cello Concerto with Raphael Wallfisch has just been released
and is already Recording of the Month on Music Web International. With over thirty CDs to its name, the majority
being for Naxos, the NCO is now known in every continent; the series of Haydn, Mozart and Mendelssohn symphonies have received outstanding reviews and the recording of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale was considered by BBC Radio 3’s CD Review programme to be the best English version. The recording for Naxos, Boccherini Cello Concertos nos. 9 – 12 with Raphael Wallfisch, has also received critical acclaim.
The NCO is involved in an extensive education programme run by their Education Officer,Helen Quayle. Workshops are givenin many of the locations where the orchestra gives concerts. The NCO, which is ‘Orchestra in Residence’ at Manchester Metropolitan University, is involved in a scheme of workshops with the MMU Institute of Education trainee teachers and their schools. Funded with money raised from North West Universities Association, a part-time one year training course completed its first year in February 2011 at MMU specifically for players from the three local chamber orchestras (Manchester Camerata, NCO and Lancashire Sinfonietta). This will help to develop the extra skills required for the delivery of education projects.
‘We look forward to hearing more of this impressive group.’
(Birmingham Post and Mail)
Players in Focus
'Playing from the Northern Chamber Orchestra that was quite simply world class'
(Opera Magazine)
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