Nottingham Evening Post - 7/3/05
'Rightly billed as a Russian evening, Saturday's concert took in Spain and Italy en route.
With conductor Derek Williams leading the tour, the Orchestra began with Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol. The piece contained several solos, each of them sensitively played. The ensemble kept its nerve, and its footing, in the exhilerating final dances. If you thought Rimsky had all the orchestral timbres, Prokofiev makes you think again. With its motoring rhythms and exotic colours, his First Violin Concerto taxes the resources of orchestra and solo violin. Contrasts of tempo were nicely effected, and both the NSO and Bradley Creswick, their vivid soloist, sounded at home in the idiom.In front of a large audience, the orchestra brought extra panache to the second half. The romantic polonaise from Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin prefaced a well-chosen suite of items froms Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet, where the drama, pathos and poetry were all caught astutely.
"Loud bangs, flashes and musket fire" were promised for Tchaikovsky's Overture 1812. The delivery was such a success that the smoke alarms went off. For me, though, the abiding memory will be of the gorgeous opening cello song.'