SALISBURY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

at City Hall

IT was an unusual evening for more than 500 concert-goers who crowded into Salisbury’s city centre venue to hear Cordelia Williams, pictured inset, play Grieg’s wonderful Piano Concerto in A Minor.

It transpired that a gas leak in Summerlock Approach had been reported at 5pm that afternoon and workmen were immediately tasked with finding the problem and carrying out the necessary repair.

The orchestra carried on regardless, with the flutes coping well with the difficult opening bars of Smetana’s Ma Vlast overture.

After the overture it was decided to bring the interval forward, in the vain hope that drilling might have stopped before the piano concerto.

Sadly, this was not the case and, as chairman Ross Mallock announced to a sympathetic audience it was to be a concerto for piano and pneumatic drill, something that the composer could never have envisaged back in 1868.

Conductor David Halls, the soloist and the whole orchestra presented a master-class in coping brilliantly under the most trying of circumstances.

After a short, second interval, Brahms’ Symphony No 2 in D major, Opus 73 formed the final part of the programme.

By then the worst of the drilling was over.

As the audience filed out of the City Hall they were not to know that the gas pipe repair would continue for another three hours.

A spokeswoman for gas distribution network company SGN said afterwards: “We were aware that a concert was taking place nearby at the City Hall, therefore we kept the orchestra's representative updated on our progress.

“We would like to sincerely apologise for any disturbance we caused."

Geoff Wills