Crowds feast on medley of talent

Picnic concert, Halle Orchestra, Tatton Park

SUNSHINE, fine music and fireworks — Tatton Park had it all on Saturday in this year’s increasingly popular annual picnic concert featuring the Halle Orchestra.

It was the first dry and balmy night for several years for the event, and brought out the crowds in their thousands, tramping across fields, and laden with tables, chairs, candles and hampers stuffed full of picnic food and wine.

The gates opened three hours before the event, giving revellers plenty of time to set up stall, and enjoy a pleasant social event ahead of the start of a concert which gave a platform to the operatic voice of Lesley Garrett, one of the nation’s most popular sopranos.

Spirits were high as one of the country’s finest orchestras began the show under the baton of conductor Philip Ellis who, having worked extensively with both Lesley and the Halle, made a professional job of bringing the two together.

It was perhaps inevitable that some of those high spirits would spill over and carry on during the concert which, for me, marred the pleasure as I tried to filter out the chatter and concentrate on the musicians I had gone to see. But the event does sell itself as a picnic concert, and that is exactly what it was — a picnic and a concert at the same time, and many seemed happy to enjoy the music almost as a background to their social occasion.

Lesley, whose warm northern personality has won her many fans over the years, gave voice to popular favourites from blockbuster stage shows including “Carmen”, “My Fair Lady”, “West Side Story”, and “Les Miserables”.

But it was the finale, with the dark summer night giving a black canvas to a stunning firework display which really caught everyone’s attention.

Concert firework specialists Dragonfire, which have been working with Tatton Park Concerts since they began 19 years ago, once more came up with the goods after darkness fell.

The skies overhead were lit with a myriad of lights from a dazzling firework display, electronically launched from platforms floating on the lake and a towering platform reaching into the skies over the stage.

Designed to dance with the music floating out over the park from the orchestra, it proved a fitting ending to what has rapidly become one of Tatton Park’s most successful attractions.