REVIEW: Guitar Fest concert by Worthing Symphony Orchestra

The title Guitar Fest isn’t WSO’s. It’s mine. What extra value for money solo guitarists do bring to the classical concert deal! Their pieces aren’t long, so someone like John Gibbons offers expert Craig Ogden extra space to do add-on stuff. The result? The guitarist plays an encore and it eclipses the rest of his threefold, effortlessly cosmopolitan offering.

Malcolm Arnold’s insightful, original, stylistically extensive and avoiding-the-obvious Concerto took us behind the scenes at a concert hall and on a film set. It celebrated two wildly different six-string masters – its object and dedicatee Julian Bream, and one of its chief inspirations, Django Reinhardt.

Then after the interval, we were whisked away for 10 minutes down a Venetian byway, beyond the populous church squares into the backstreets. There we found Vivaldi spotlighting the lute or mandolin in the sparkling sunlight, and if anything, in even more carefree mood than were he writing instead for solo flute, to awaken worshippers from their ecclesiastical slumbers.

But between these marvellously contrasting outings, Ogden’s encore dived us down into a Parisian nightclub basement. Not Debussy, nor Ravel, Gershwin, nor even Stravinsky on a night out. But the man they went to see alongside Stefan Grappelli – Django Reinhardt, the Hot Club Quintet’s French gypsy who deftly and dazzlingly fingered his guitar with the only two working digits. Ogden played us a modern, all-stops-out arrangement of Reinhardt’s ‘Nuages’ (Clouds) by Roland Dyens, a Tunisian-born Parisian virtuoso in his own right.

This would have nonplussed a 20th Century British classical audience but now it well nigh brought the house down. It may have included the first guitar string-bend ever heard during a classical concert in this hall. Most of us now ‘get’ guitar – thank goodness. And we realise that it’s Reinhardt, perhaps even more than Segovia, who walks off with the more admiration of classical guitarists.

Although, I’m not sure yet about Django Reinhardt tripping off Mr Gibbons’ tongue. Introducing the Arnold Concerto from the rostrum, but still so excited by telling us about his and Elgar’s Wolverhampton Wanderers having near-on saved themselves from relegation, I think he informed us that ‘Janghart Rhino’ was a key figure in the Concerto’s conception.(Is this a newly endangered wildlife species, I wonder?)

Ogden the Aussie has followed compatriot John Williams towards the top of the world guitar tree. On the piano stool at his left elbow was a very small, bespoke German amplifier, calibrated and attuned, he told me, to his own personal touch, articulation and tone. And he was playing his 2011Greg Smallman guitar strung with D’Addarios.

The picture of balance and composure while his spreading hands performing frequent miracles – the necessary classical guitar playing stance – this disguised the ubiquitous mastery modern guitarists like Ogden bring in through the door. Richard Durrant of Shoreham, similarly world class, who also performs the unorthodox Arnold Concerto, has his own wide local following because of this easy and natural versatility in guitarists, borne of their seemingly innate wide vision and eagerness to conquer, rather than just dabble in other styles. Durrant has a musical son. He’s called him Django.

One innocent, attractive tune binds and carries the first movement of the Arnold Concerto, and it deliberately isn’t Spanish. Modal music, not matador material, steers the work along a more British track. Strip carpets of repeating chord progressions also help define it.

And there cannot be another guitar concerto slow movement sounding like this one. Did Henry Mancini influence Arnold? It feels the other way round. There is filmic suspense and tension, and a jazz and blues-tinged nocturnal feeling, inflected with subtle colours from horn, clarinet and flute – the only instruments involved other than strings.

Of Vivaldi’s 500-odd concertos, those for mandolin or lute sound among the most vigorous and sparklingly delightful. WSO pre-billed this as a mandolin one and the attraction to me was instant. However, Ogden did not risk either of these intimate instrumens in the large Assembly Hall. Instead he showed us how it sounds on guitar. It was an ongoing flow of Vivaldian notes, with all sections of the WSO strings gladly playing second fiddle, but contributing a velvetine backdrop in the slow movement.

Someone else avoiding the obvious was Gibbons, in resuming his own exploration of Haydn Symphonies. Only connoisseurs know No 30 or remember any of its themes, which include modified Gregorian chant, seized on by some publisher to apply a nickname by which to sell the music. One should never dismiss a Haydn symphony imagining it might lack interest – especially if it’s unnamed.

Haydn, as ever experimenting happily with everything, wraps up No 30 after three movements, not for the only time with a closing minuet – though an elaborated one. But right from the unexpected opening trumpets call, No 30 fascinated. WSO are starting to sound more like a Haydn orchestra when needed. Gibbons seems to be making ground in this.

Flute and bassoon, Monica McCarron and Simon Chiswell, were the star duettists in the Haydn and the Mozart, coming in superb sync, as they jolly well had to, despite the handicap in the orchestral seating of not even being able to look at each other. “We simply have to play in time – and hope,” smiled Chiswell, who’s situated a row behind McCarron. We’re talking working professional musicians here, remember.

To here

Plaudits, too, especially in the Jupiter Symphony, for WSO debut-making oboist Mafanwy Price. Chineke! are among her orchestras and she led the section with vitality. Mozart 41 is a clarity test for any orchestra. Most of all in the final movement, where there is no hiding place from their responsibility for the precise and almost stupefying brilliance of the counterpoint. An edgy WSO first movement, a luxuriant second, then a concentrated, re-energising Minuet all paved the way for the final destination’s challenge. All under the taut control of Gibbons, his strings on their mettle for guest leader David Juritz, the overall result was spot-on.

How to end a Haydn or Mozart symphony’s always an interpretative expectation in the seasoned listener. It’s often valuably witty if you don’t slow down. If, more commonly, you do, it celebrates a race hard-won, or relief at the completion of a testing and arduous task. Gibbons chose the emphasis of the latter. He actually slowed down so much – slower than I’ve ever heard any Haydn or Mozart wrapped up – one could picture all the WSO runners collapsing in a heap at the finishing line.

It was a concert of constant fluctuation of WSO forces. They varied with each piece. The only clarinet spotted all day was Ian Scott in the Arnold. When we finally reached the jubilant Jupiter, out of the blue we suddenly had a timpanist. And even then he sat out the slow movement, putting down his beaters and taking off his glasses. Inevitable banter afterwards, on the theme of part-time working. I asked Robert Millett what he’d done with himself since lunch until roughly 4.30pm? He’d been sitting down, composing. Ahh, that’s productivity!

Richard Amey

Next concerts

Tuesday April 15 (1.10), Chapel Royal Brighton Lunchtime Series: Kenny Fu, piano – ‘Chopin Masterpieces’. Kenny Fu gave the most recent International Interview Concert in Worthing, last November (not playing Chopin – although Yi-Yang Chen is on May 25. See below)

Tuesday 6 May (12.30), Christ Church Lunchtime Series: Tribute to guitarist Richard Bowen (died 2024), by Paul Gregory guitar, John Collins organ and Friends.

Free admission, retiring church donations welcomed

Sunday 18 May (2.45), Worthing Symphony (John Gibbons), Assembly Hall: Mendelssohn, A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture; Beethoven, Piano Concerto No 3 (Yi-Yang Chen); Delius, Fennimore & Gerda Intermezzo; Beethoven, Symphony No 8.

Sunday 25 May (2.45pm): Yi-Yang Chen’s ‘voices’ International Interview Concert, St Symphorian’s Durrington Hill, Worthing BN13 2PU. Solo Piano, full performance and Conversations with Guest Interviewer. Features – Ask A Question, Guess the Composer, Give It A Title.

Music, not in performance order: Beethoven, ‘Waldstein’ Sonata; Chopin, Scherzo in C# minor and Opus 17 Mazurkas 1 & 4; Gershwin-Wild, ‘Embraceable You’; Gulli Björnsson (Iceland), ‘Ocean Surface’ (World Premiere); Y-Y Chen, In Memorium 11 March (2011) ‘Twisting Paths’ and ‘Shrine Portrait’; Rautavaara (Finland), ‘Fourths’ Etude; Ingrid Stölzel (Germany-US), ‘In Foreign Lands’.

Info and tickets here (via Facebook) or here (seetickets.com) or buy on the door.

Saturday 7 June (7.30), Worthing Philharmonic (dominic Grier), Assembly Hall: Beethoven, Egmont Overture; Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No 1 (Julian Chan); Schumann, Symphony No 2. With pre-concert talk by Dominic Grier and guests.

Tickets from www.wtm.uk

Saturday June 14 (7.30),The Boundstone Chorus, at St Michael and All Angels Church, South Lancing: celebrating the 80th birthdays of Sir John Rutter and their own director Aedan Kerney MBE. Music tbc. Box office: 01903 762793 / [email protected] / www.theboundstonechorus.co.uk/concerts

Saturday 21 June (7.30), Worthing Choral Society at St George’s Church, Worthing (director Aedan Kerney, associate music director Sam Barton, keyboard Olly Parr, organ Philip White Jones): music to include Joanna Forbes L’Estrange’s choral re-imagining of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons – ‘A Season to Sing’.

Tuesday 17 June (12.30), Christ Church Lunchtime Series: The Brighton Guitar Quartet.

Tuesday 8 July (12.30), Christ Church Lunchtime Series: Yoko Ono piano

Tuesday 12 August (12.30), Christ Church Lunchtime Series: South Downs Folk Singers

Tuesday 23 September (12.30), Christ Church Lunchtime Series: John Collins organ