The third piece of this concert in tribute to the life of Alan Price was Mozart’s Divertimento in D, K131, 1st Movement, (Allegro), composed in Salzburg in 1772, when Mozart was just 16. David Milner informed us that the piece was intended for outdoor performance, with instrumentation and scoring for a rich ensemble featuring flute, oboe, bassoon, horns and strings - the horns lending this divertimento a texture of celebratory serenade. The performance demonstrated how well-practiced, precise, and coherently the orchestra is playing under David Milner’s dedicated and masterful musical direction. There were playful conversations between the woodwind of Sheila Rayson’s flute section, Paul Judson’s and Steph Ames’ bassoons, Diana Whaley’s and Gareth Williams’ oboes; and a tight string section led by Helen Armstrong.
 

This concert at St Gabriel’s took Mark Greenfield back to early 1995 when Alan Price directed the Sunderland Music Service Youth Orchestra in a ‘high stakes balancing act’ he coined ‘Protests via Performances’, intentionally designed to showcase what the loss of the schools’ music service would mean, and to garner community support in opposing the cuts. It was the first of many high publicity concerts to highlight the loss of opportunity the axing of the music service would mean for school age pupils to learn and play a musical instrument.

Bassoonist and one time Musical Director of SSO, Paul Judson, had shown the fascinated David Milner his own arrangement of Stephen Sondheim’s Send In The Clowns, originally written for the 1973 musical A Little Night Music, and this well-known piece was duly programmed as the fourth for this concert in celebration of Alan Price’s enthusiasm for wide diversity in musical programming for youth orchestras. Paul’s sensitive arrangement of this touching piece featured the evocative cor anglais of Diana Whaley with virtuoso Sheila Rayson’s flute in this poignant piece - to extended applause from the very enthusiastic audience.

Within a couple of years in post, along with his team of peripatetic tutors and instrumental instructors, Alan Price had built extraordinary relationships with specialist music teachers and introduced music services to 38 primary schools whose pupils were benefiting from exciting musical opportunities in choral groups, in learning and playing instruments, and in the youth orchestra. He went on to extend and embed musicality in senior schools Southmoor, Redhouse, St Anthony’s, St Aidan’s, and the Houghton Schools’ Band and Brass Band. A number of members of SSO today are former pupils who benefited from the commitment to music learning led by Alan Price - including the current Musical Director of Sunderland’s Youth and Community Orchestra, Emma Mapplebeck. Mark Greenfield, himself a co-founder of the orchestra, acknowledged that “without doubt, Alan laid the foundation of today’s Sunderland Symphony Orchestra.

It’s not often that SSO have the opportunity to perform a complete symphony at its public concerts, although I am reliably informed that this does more frequently take place in rehearsal. Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809) was pivotal in the evolution of chamber music forms such as the string quartet and his contributions have led him to be called ‘Father of the Symphony’. He was a friend and mentor to Mozart, and a teacher of Beethoven. The final piece chosen by Musical Director David Milner was Haydn’s Symphony No. 101 - ‘The Clock’. Completed by 1794, Haydn wrote it for the second of his two visits to London, where it was enthusiastically received. Under David Milner’s baton, this performance of the symphony in four movements was delicate, precise, and playful. Twenty-four years older than Mozart, Haydn’s originality sounds to be from a slightly earlier, more formal era, albeit with Haydn’s perhaps Hegelian sense of humour. The first movement’s intricate adagio strings evoke a pastoral setting with light hunting rhythms as we are transported to the C18th Georgian era. The moniker “The Clock” comes from the steady, ticking accompaniment in the second andante movement. The very delicate, precise strings under Helen Armstrong’s leadership evoke playful balletic dance steps contrasting nicely with the more formal courtier minuet evocations of the third movement - these in turn contrasting with folk-like rustic humour. The fourth and final movement raced to a vivacious conclusion and rapturous applause with MD David Milner taking several bows on behalf of the orchestra risen to their feet.
Bravo!
 

All collection proceeds from the concert are being donated to the Sunderland Youth and Community Orchestra in memory of Alan Price and to promote diverse music services to the young people of Sunderland.
 

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Matthew Burge, 25 October 2026