Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed at the Orchestra: A more than enjoyable event celebrating The Beano with Colin Currie and the BBC Concert Orchestra

Gavin Higgins: Beano Concerto - George Jackson, Colin Currie, BBC Concert Orchestra - Royal Festival Hall (Photo: BBC / Mark Allan)

Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed at the Orchestra - Gavin Higgins: Beano Concerto, Ravel, Dobrinka Tabakova, Nancy Galbraith, Prokofiev, Arturo Marquez; Colin Currie, BBC Concert Orchestra, George Jackson, Nadia Wadia, Asha Sthanakiya; Royal Festival Hall

Let's face it any concert that fills the Royal Festival Hall with families enjoying the premiere of a new concerto by one of Britain's most talented young composers has to be a good thing.

I have to confess that I always feel a bit of a fraud when I go to family-oriented classical music events. Having no children of my own and not being able to borrow any for the occasions, usually, I am a lone adult in a sea of parents and children. This was even more the case on Saturday 3 June 2023 when there were celebrations at the Southbank Centre for the 85th anniversary of The Beano, with a focus on the character of Dennis the Menace (and his dog, Gnasher). Now, whilst I have never seen the popular CBBC animated series Dennis & Gnasher Unleashed, the original comic was certainly a firm part of my childhood. But the Dennis of the film series is rather different from the Dennis of my memory, more modern and very streetwise.

Before the concert, the Clore Ballroom was awash with children enthusiastically making music for massed improvised percussion inspired by characters from The Beano, alongside lots of other drop-in activities. Then, for Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed at the Orchestra in the Royal Festival Hall, conductor George Jackson and the BBC Concert Orchestra, with percussionist Colin Currie, performed Gavin Higgins' Beano Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra (which had received its premiere that morning at the first iteration of this concert), alongside music by Ravel, Dobrinka Tabakova, Nancy Galbraith, Prokofiev and Arturo Marquez. And there was music from the animated series, Dennis & Gnasher Unleashed too, in arrangements by Stephen Whibley.

Gavin Higgins: Beano Concerto - George Jackson, Colin Currie, BBC Concert Orchestra - Royal Festival Hall (Photo: BBC / Mark Allan)

As we entered the auditorium there was a free colouring sheet, whilst also had details of the works in the programme and the performers. A very full stage indeed featured not just the orchestra but two separate percussion set ups, as well as a Dennis & Gnasher-themed bedroom. There were, of course, cartoon images projected onto a screen on the back. Many of the orchestra sported Dennis' familiar black and red striped shirt, with others in red.

We launched straight in with the prelude from Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin, and as the music flowed past, fluid, swift and elegant, images of the orchestra were projected onto the screen. A child (Asha Sthanakiya) entered the bedroom and when the music was over, started reading from a book, introducing us to Beanotown. There was no presenter, as such, instead Sthanakiya and Nina Wadia as a mother figure developed a storyline involving the child being unwilling to go to sleep, along the way there was a search for a suitable instrument for Gnasher to play, and the orchestra members were increasingly involved so that at one point they all start reading copies of the comic and the annual, which were then collected by Wadia's Mother during the music. The spoken sections never went on too long and formed a delightful narrative thread, without any sense of 'hello children, this is an orchestra'.

Woven into the narrative were references to Dennis and Gnasher's adventures which were seen in animated form with Jackson and the orchestra deftly providing a live-music soundtrack using Whibley's colourful orchestrations.

Gavin Higgins: Beano Concerto - Colin Currie, BBC Concert Orchestra - Royal Festival Hall (Photo: BBC / Mark Allan)

The centrepiece of the concert was, of course, Gavin Higgins' Beano Concerto. This was in five movements which were spread across the concert and having heard the piece in sections, I do hope we get a chance to hear it as a whole. Perhaps deliberately it is a very visual piece, Colin Currie being challenged physically not just by the amount of percussion work he had to do, but moving between the two setups during the final movement.

For the opening movement, Currie was playing tuned and semi-pitched percussion, anything that could be put in a row and create a sort of scale. Higgins had written a lot of very cartoon-like music for the orchestra, the sort of punctuations you get in animated films, with Currie being busy over the top of this, the percussion solo as a sort of narrative thread. The orchestra had a big percussion section too, timpani plus four other players, and it was almost non-stop for Currie. The second movement was still busy, but focused on untuned percussion, with the orchestra contributing vivid noises that commented on the solo and continued the sense of a narrative happening. The third movement was quieter and featured Currie starting on a series of upturned plastic buckets. Vivid and tense with excitement, it was never over loud yet full of imaginative timbres and textures, along with impulsive excitement. Next came a big drum solo, a sort of percussion cadenza, that was fast and exciting. At first, punctuated by the odd hi-hat stroke, eventually, Higgins and Currie wove the two elements, drums and cymbals, into sort of polyphonic lines, blurring boundaries. The orchestra percussion joined in, and the music slowed right down before starting again over a slow, vivid rhythm. This final movement was definitely full of colour and movement, along with that sense of narrative, and the final section was fast and furious leading to a mad climax. The performance was a real tour de force for Currie as much of the solo part was fast and non-stop. All in all, a terrific piece with Jackson and the orchestra providing much colour and vivid character.

Gavin Higgins: Beano Concerto - George Jackson, BBC Concert Orchestra - Royal Festival Hall (Photo: BBC / Mark Allan)

Dobrinka Tabakova's Orpheus' Comet was written in 2017 for the BBC Concert Orchestra, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Euradio Music Exchange. It began fast and vivid, almost chase-like, but with lovely transparent orchestration giving a sense of floating. The climax of the work featured quotations from the opening toccata of Monteverdi's Orfeo in lush orchestrations. American composer Nancy Galbraith's A Festive Violet Pulse premiered in 1998 as a commission from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. It began as a big, wide-open music, very filmic in sound, over a constant pulse and there was a quasi-Latin-American feel to some of the material leading to a colourful climax.

Whilst the Tabakova and Galbraith had punctuated the narrative with music of a suitable character, Prokofiev's 'Montagues and Capulets' from Romeo and Juliet had a more definite role as the big saxophone solo in the centre related to the child's search for a suitable instrument for Gnasher to play!

There was, of course, a participatory element as well. The orchestra performed the New Bash Street School Song as live-music accompanying the animation of Dennis performing the song (it is in fact a sort of Rap), and the audience was encouraged to chant the chorus.

Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed at the Orchestra - George Jackson, Nina Wadia, BBC Concert Orchestra - Royal Festival Hall (Photo: BBC / Mark Allan)

We ended with Arturo Marquez' Conga del fuego nuevo, a work full of colour, movement and excitement but one that, perhaps, did not quite generate the right sort of energy with the audience. However, there was a final piece, a repeat of the New Bash Street School Song to send everyone home happy.

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