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Aberdeen Music Centre Christmas Concert

Music Hall, Saturday 12th December 2015

The perfect pathway to Christmas: throw yourself note by joyous note in to the festive spirit at Aberdeen Music Centre’s annual Christmas Concert.

The evening performance included the Centre’s senior students, who delivered a night of musical magic. The Piping Group galloped to an uplifting medley with Highland heart, and much foot tapping from the audience. Next, the Youth Wind Band gave a glorious rendition of “A Cowboy Christmas” followed by “A Fireside Christmas.”

The tangoed tempo slowed down as the Training Orchestra performed a raw rendition of the March from Carmen. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer then playfully trotted around the hall with cheeky curiosity, followed by Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers,” a melody that massages the heart with its timeless beauty.

Aberdeen City Youth String Ensemble created poetic bliss in their rendition of Handel and Mozart, a meeting of music and inner meaning that defied expression and lifted the heart.

A merry Jingle Bell Gallop from the Intermediate Wind Band ignited the Christmas spark in our minds, followed by “Once in Royal David’s City,” which lit the meaning of the season in our hearts. Finally, “The Name’s Claus … Santa Claus” combined humour with Bond-driven drama, and painted smiles across the auditorium as everyone moved in time.

Coro Piccolo, a choir of considerable young talent, bewitched the audience with their silken songs, notes woven from a well of honey, sweet nectar to the ears. I particularly enjoyed “One Candle Lights the Way,” a vision of candle-lit infinity, a heaven of song in flames, warmth to wash away all ills.

The evening concluded on a musical high, a nirvana of sound. Excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake filled the hall with sensory storm, a gate opening to the voice of a hundred hearts. My favourite composer combined with the raw energy of the Aberdeen City Youth Orchestra: an early Christmas present that eluded expression, beauty in sound, the voice of Christmases past and festive forever. I could see them around me, ballerinas in ghostly white; I closed my eyes and opened them on a world of winter snow, where precious dreams are birthed and come true.