REVIEW: Brighton16 chamber choir with Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra

Brighton16 chamber choir with Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra strings, harp, trumpets & timpani at St George’s Church, Worthing on Saturday 5 April 2025 (7pm); leader/violin soloist Abigail Dance, conductor Matt Jelf, organ Edward Byrne.

Ravel, Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte (Pavane for a dead princess to dance), world premier of arrangement by Ansel Chaloner-Hughes, for violin solo, strings and harp; Chaloner-Hughes, world premier of Elegy for solo violin, strings and harp; Vaughan Williams, Mass in G Minor, for a cappella mixed choir; Duruflé, Requiem, for double mixed choir and solo quartet (Sarah von Riebech, Liz Webb, Sam Barton, Simon Madge; Pie Jesus solo: Frances Rowberry), strings, harp, 3 trumpets, timpani and organ.

It’s not quite US president Reagan and British premiere Margaret Thatcher holding hands historically coming down some aircraft stepway. But a Brighton choir wanting to perform in Worthing, then seeking collaboration with a chosen Worthing orchestra to perform with there? Surely this sets a modern precedent as an expression of respect. Not something Worthing would have expected from the city of the i360.

But in the years I have been covering classical music in both places I have seen Brighton’s assumed artistic superiority over Worthing become pock-marked. Only Edinburgh can compete with Brighton Festival. But Worthing Symphony Orchestra, having gone toe-to-toe with Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra, then eclipsed it under John Gibbons during the decade pre-pandemic. And Dominic Grier’s so-far 11 years of training Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra has imbued it with musician-magnetic quality and looks like it’s hoisted Worthing 2-1 up over Brighton in the scoreboard of large orchestras worth the ticket price.

Choirs proliferate from Brighton through Shoreham to Worthing. It seems Brighton ones generally, set the area standard and see little point in travelling beyond the city unless invited. However, Brighton16 now think differently.

Their director is Matt Jelf. Choir directors called Matthew generally don’t deign to abbreviate their name: I smell change! Jelf asked Grier if he’d like to collaborate – and on Worthing soil. None of this, “Oh, but of course it’ll have to be done under our roof”. There was quick agreement, with Grier offering all the conducting reins to Jelf and throwing into the concert mix two enriching new pieces Jelf wouldn’t have known about, by WPO’s own Composer in Residence, Ansel Chaloner-Hughes.

Jelf has been a Sussex music schoolteacher since emigrating to Brighton from south east London in 2016, founding Brighton16 in 2019 – inspired by Harry Christophers’ The Sixteen, of international fame. Why? “Between the community choirs and highest-quality large ones like Brighton Festival Chorus, and aside from the crowded area of early music specialists, I saw little in the middle,” Jelf explained.

“I saw a gap in Brighton’s market for a chamber choir interested in 20th and 21st Century part songs. There’s more diversity of style, we’re singing almost entirely a cappella, and we’ve built a pool of 26 voices from a wide geographical catchment area.”

But twice in 2023, Jelf teamed up Brighton16 with instrumental partners to perform Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concert with Phoenix Big Band in churches on each other’s home patches, Arundel and Brighton. “So this year,” continues Jelf, “we established a strategic policy of working in new venues. Worthing had two orchestras, the town has a growing reputation, and I took my link-up with Dominic on trust. But it wasn’t until I began this collaboration that I realised how rich the Worthing musical offering is.”

The date then agreed, Jelf and Grier later found their chosen evening in Worthing would have competition – and from another choir from afar seeking Worthing audience ears. Arundel’s Arun Choral Society and Horsham’s West Sussex Music organisation (themselves no strangers to Worthing performing venues) hired 800-seater The Assembly Hall to present some orchestral pieces with Carl Orff’s unchained choral box-office buster, Carmina Burana.

“What was fascinating in Worthing last night,” remarked Jelf the morning afterwards. “was that we still packed out our venue.” The audience spread backwards the maximum, to fill also the St George’s cafe area.

Vaughan Williams’ Mass and Duruflé’s age-shift on Fauré’s Requiem model provided the extra textural and sonic interest of the performing forces, contrasting an unaccompanied Mass with a Requiem with reduced orchestra to fit the available floor.

The Worthing audience were first taken aback, then invigorated, by a strength, size and resilience in Brighton16’s sound and a consistency of tuning accuracy they were unused to hearing frequently. They responded fully in their reception to both choral performances by the two dozen voices Jelf was directing. Why not just 16? “We needed all our available members, because we were up against 39 WPO instrumentalists,” Jelf advised.

A debut in an unfamiliar acoustic is an instant challenge in balance calculation for a choir, let alone having an orchestra compounding matters. So in a series of big-sounding full-chorus climaxes, high-registers were vocally shriller than probably intended, and the dynamic range narrower at the lower end. We got little idea of what Brighton16 sound like singing softly, nuanced and in deepened expression.

The WPO forces, their strings their developing pride, played their inward-reaching part in bringing to the Worthing public for them a rare hearing of Duruflé’s age-shifting take on the Gabriel Fauré requiem model. The harp intensified the strings. The trumpets held themselves in check admirably – a couple of times magically, late on, when Jelf blended them to uncanny effect.

There was firm impact when all the forces were in full throat, such as in the Sanctus & Benedictus. Frances Rowberry sang the Pie Jesus with a power not sought by the Fauré or Lloyd Webber equivalents. The WPO basses ushered in the Agnus Dei from another world. Alonzo Mendoza’s kettle drums gave us shuddering celestial thunder in the Libera Me. Then finally the In Paradisum: a sublime veil draped and swirled from the WPO strings, with heavenly glockenspiel from Edward Byrne’s organ, and then Durufle’s uncertain ending, to a Requiem sometimes wracked by unbanishable doubts, betrayed in the harmonisation.

But what of this younger man, Ansel Chaloner-Hughes? Give him an opportunity and he wolfs it up with not one but two new pieces. He explained to me that his look across Ravel’s Sleeping Princess was to bring out the different sonorities of each violin/viola/cello string, and to reproduce some of the missing wind instruments and horns with scoring effects from the strings and harp. His addition of string quartet cast different lights on things. His work bade a warm welcome.

One of Ansel’s publicity pictures already betrays a personal rural affinity, having been taken at local Chantonbury Ring – whence, on a clear day, one can see Vaughan Williams’s Leith Hill northwards, John Ireland’s former home a mile away, and westwards the wooded hills around Elgar’s former coountry retreat near Stopham, not to mention Michael Finnissey’s Steyning, eastwards. Just out of sight: Havergal Brian’s Shoreham. Realise this is ‘British Composers’ Panorama’ next time you’re up there!

Ansel’s Elegy, using also solo violin and a cello solo, told us what a 19-year-old might be thinking, acknowledging, respecting, maybe wanting to avoid, when creating a new piece appearing on the same bill as Vaughan Williams. Ansel has his own voice, and already his own rapid accomplishment on this evidence. Yes, here it felt quite British pastoral. But it wasn’t Vaughan Williams. But if we think pastoral a compositional cliché, do musical elegies ever appear in urban settings? Among depicted dirt and concrete, what would they sound elegiac about? Although, not all elegies may be about people. . .

I’d like to listen to this Elegy again, and imagine where AC-H is actually standing: grubby street, rubbish dump, industrial estate, car park, lane, beach, garden, hilltop, churchyard, football ground? Several of these, maybe? Possibly crucial though, is what, if anything, is being recalled. AC-H hasn’t said . . . yet. One thing, though. This composer at the moment knows the value of ending his say in good time. His music doesn’t outstay its welcome. And for that he gains respect.

Richard Amey

Next Brighton16:

Saturday 7 June (7pm) at St Paul’s Church, Brighton, ‘To The Sea’. Maritime-themed 20th and 21st Century songs. Vaughan Williams, The Lover’s Ghost; Holst, I Love My Love; Delius, To be Sung on a Summer Night on the River; Parry, Never Weather-beaten Sail; Andrew, All Things are Quite Silent; Burke, Fare Thee well; Hilary Campbell, Blow the Wind Southerly; Grainger, Mo Nighean Dubk; Ireland, Sea Fever arr for tenor, baritone and bass; Mantyjarvi (Finnish), Canticum Calamitatis Maritimae (on the sinking of SS Estonia).

Sunday 29 June (8pm) at St Anne’s Church, Lewes. ‘To The Sea’ concert, repeated as the Lewes Festival of Song’s wrap-up event.

Next concerts

Tuesday April 15 (1.10), Chapel Royal Brighton Lunchtime Series: Kenny Fu, piano – ‘Chopin Masterpieces’. Fu, who appeared at The International Interview Concerts in November – not playing Chopin.

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 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