Clive Peacock gives his take on CBSO and CBSO Youth Orchestra's performance at Warwick Arts Centre.

Butterworth Hall's extended platform was filled to the limit to accommodate a total of one hundred and twenty three young musicians including a sprinkling of those from the professional ranks in a Side by Side venture involving the best of young musicians in the Midlands.

Imagine asking nearly a hundred young people to play the most moving and challenging of all Shostakovich's symphonies – his seventh, the Leningrad.

This work is a challenge to many an orchestra!

Under the lively direction of Joshua Weilerstein, this piece was expertly delivered to an audience who were on their feet within seconds of the last climax to applaud thunderously, many in tears.

This symphony is full of messages and stories, the first performance was broadcast by loudspeakers into the German camp in August 1942, thereby confirming in the minds of the Nazis that they could not win, the siege would not work.

Resounding strings open the work with a theme soon to be echoed by the wind sections with piercing piccolo and exquisite solo oboe playing by Luke Cutler, a student at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

As the pace quickens there was some astonishingly fine bassoon playing. An angry and bitter second movement with only the harps offering some hope is full of strong wind playing followed, soon, by brash brass playing.

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What an amazing noise!

The finale arrived with a flurry of string playing in a march-like manner driven by a comprehensive percussion section exhibiting some very active xylophone playing.

It seemed that all one hundred and twenty three musicians were involved in the build up to a remarkable climax in one way or another with brass sections producing a level of noise seldom experienced at the Butterworth!

It would be remiss not to give space to a short review of the opening work, the Shostakovich Festive Overture. Legend has it he composed the work within three day as a commission for the Bolshoi Theatre in 1954!

Sensational fanfares opened and closed this six minute work; half a dozen trombones and trumpets stationed behind the choir stalls. Wow! Quite a frantic six minutes!