Why do amateur performers still flourish?

Chesterfield is a medium-sized town just off the M1, near what were once the coalfields of north-eastern Derbyshire. Not without history (and a lovely old market square) and not without character (a church with a splendidly warped spire, positively Van Goghian, is its most famous feature), the town is nevertheless an unassuming, formerly industrial north Midlands community which earned its living until recently from a steelmaking and coal-mining regional economy. The posher parts of Derbyshire consider Chesterfield a spirited if sometimes hard-bitten place, a popular joke about the twisted spire being that it got stuck when, centuries ago, the spire saw a virgin entering the church to be married and — astonished — bent down to take a closer look; and that if the spire ever sees another virgin bride in Chesterfield, the shock will jolt it straight again. But so far it never has. Chesterfield is no Harrogate.

Yet the town supports a full orchestra. Funded overwhelmingly by its members and patrons, the Chesterfield Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1982 during a decade when the town saw the comfort blanket of subsidised industry torn away. And to judge by last Sunday night’s performance in Matlock, it is steadily lifting its sights and its stature. A tireless supporter of the CSO had leafleted all the car windscreens at the station, including mine, so I thought I’d go.

The Members’ Room in County Hall in Matlock is a magnificent, Italianate, mid-Victorian auditorium which was once the great reception room of a huge and fashionable spa: Smedley’s Hydropathic Hotel, a favourite of Sir Thomas Beecham’s. Both Edward Elgar and Sir Charles Parry visited; and for Sunday’s concert the orchestra performed an English programme: John Ireland’s Epic March, Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Parry’s ‘Cambridge’ Symphony No. 2.

The CSO played to a big and enthusiastic audience, all local.