REVIEW - Symphonic Dances from Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra

Worthing’s fans of classical music are developing the curiosity the genre needs. The spadework has been done the last 15 years principally by Worthing Symphony Orchestra and Worthing Choral Society’s respective directors, John Gibbons and Aedan Kerney. This receptive public inquisitiveness surfaced again on Sunday, when the newer directorial force on the block, Dominic Grier, presented with Worthing Philharmonic a contemporary Concerto for an improbable candidate – the recorder.

It generated the most interest on the day. Nearly all had come primarily to hear opulent, sexy Strauss and rumbustious Rachmaninov, but went home with the concerto their likeliest uppermost memory. The Rosenkavalier tunes and scenarios, with their hazily lit, soft-focused images, blurred emotional edges and languid waltzing, contrasted with the more bracing rhythms, gestures and urgencies of the Symphonic Dances. But the newness and unexpectedness of Graham Fitkin’s recorder excursion concentrated and sustained the minds and interest of most of us, who were there simply happening upon it. Its effect and impact was visual as well as aural.

Wind musicians often work in different sizes and pitches of instrument. And certain breeds take the stage as though armed for engagement. Take David Jackson of the still-extant British 1970s progressives, Van der Graaf Generator. He’d be on stage as if a hunter seeking various kinds of kill. He’d have a straight soprano saxophone in his mouth and hands, while his curved tenor saxophone was slung around his right shoulder and his alto around his left. On a stand ready for action would be his flute. Sometimes he’d play the tenor and alto together at once, playing in jabbing, attacking fifths or octaves – as might a whole brass section.

Then, since the 2000s there’s been Red Priest’s own emergent world recorder virtuoso – Piers Adams, taking the stage like an armed bandit. There’d be a tenor recorder on a ledge, poised for pick-up, an alto (aka treble) at his lips, a soprano (aka descant) tucked under his belt like a pistol, and a sopranino hidden, with intent, in his jacket inside pocket. These guys weaponise their instruments. Each delivers a different blow or caress, alone or in combination.

Enter Worthing on Sunday, Daniel Swani. Young enough to be student of either of these elders aforementioned. But with an oddly different stage equipment presence. His instruments are on display like an odd art installation. Some sit ready on a ledge beside two strange, pale-coloured, apparently modern plywood vertical objects that could, perhaps, be protective cases for tubular bells, maybe destined for the percussion section but delivered astray? What are they, and what are they doing there?

We find out. Swani immediately shifts towards the taller of the two, on its stand and reaching about 5ft 10in high. He then blows into a tube poking out of it at head height. It’s a modern contra-bass recorder and its near-twin is a bass recorder, both built with their tubes (aka bores) square instead of round. Both sound so low and mellow they need amplification in this situation. Added to Swani’s brown conventional bass recorder, and his yellow tenor, alto and black sopranino, this is a further education in classical music’s unexpected.

The next audience surprise revelation was the music. Cornishman Fitkin, composing in 2017, leaves all the jolly melody making and consort harmonising to past composers. Instead, this time, he is interested in the sounds and effects made by the mouth, tongue and breath, set within a modern full symphony orchestra. Sharing around the textures, atmospheres and sonorities possible, above the orchestra’s varied and sustained rhythms we’ve become used to in all music’s now international and cross-idiom breadth.

Jazz wind players, familiarly to us, habitually employ breath effects, so Fitkin places these in a realm of restrained, eastern-flavoured timbres, and transports the listener somewhere they can’t quite pin down, between Ronnie Scott’s, the Andes, the Amazon and South East Asian temples. The imagination is especially fired, early on in the piece, by the glockenspiel and xylophone of the WPO’s Ethan Cook, and the tam-tam (aka gong). Orchestral percussionists (or even Queen’s Roger Taylor) so often have to lug a gong into a hall, for just one or, if lucky, two single bashes all concert. Miraculously, it got full employment and the music itself, as well as the audience, loved it.

Fitkin showcases the recorder family, progressively from the lowest upwards, the musical momentum and sonic scale increasing during that ascent. Ultimately – and surely this can’t be a miscalculation by composer, or conductor – the sopranino, despite its greater penetration, is out-sounded by the orchestra as it reaches whollest force. The orchestra is throwing its arms around the recorder in ultimate exultation at everyone reaching journey’s end. The audience received it all with mounting fascination, absorption, and vocal enthusiasm with their final acclaim.

This performance will have filled almost every subsequent conversation in the audience and it was all thanks to two special things. Firstly, the moment last year that conductor Dominic Grier walked unwittingly into a read-through of the Concerto in a room at London’s Royal Academy of Music. And thereon vowed to bring the work here. Secondly, it was the afternoon’s first music the audience heard. As if through virgin ears, the Concerto was perceived in its own private context, uncoloured by the effect on the listener of any piece performed before it.

But that hadn’t been the plan. Der Rosenkavalier was meant to start the concert. Until at rehearsal, when the paraphernalia of the square recorder amplification equipment, stands, mics and leads created fear of too much pre-setting-up delay following the Strauss. Second violins front-desker Rachel Purdie had then piped up, “Why not play it first?”

This way round, Strauss Suite coming next was a huge change of gear and expressive clamour. Audience ears were thrown off kilter – I felt bewilderment myself –but we recovered equilibrium after the interval with the exhilaration of the Symphonic Dances.

Clare Thornton-Wood’s oboe excelled as the key mood setter, scene colourer and feelings signaller in the Strauss. In the Rachmaninov, many had a light bulb moment. A solo octet of clarinet, flute, oboe and bassoon couples sounded as though they had a pleasing but mystery bedfellow. Pan the eyes left and, lo, indeed, we were listening to a nonet. The delicious guest extra was Laura Kjærgaard-Grier’s alto saxophone – in its straight orchestral role. Nothing to do with jazz expression, but making simply the kind of smooth, luxurious sound that should by now have aroused grave-bound Mozart back into a second coming, just to get his compositional hands on it.

Conductor Dominic Grier is now talking sometimes to his audience about things. He is bright and instantly likeable. And under him this is an orchestra genuinely and palpably excited at what they are putting together and sharing with their public, each concert. They cheer their leader off the stage at the end and they emerge from the dressing rooms with grins on their faces. This feelgood factor is cross-infecting WPO audiences into growth. Has Worthing classical, now, ever had it so good?

Richard Amey

See WPO’s very different next offering and collaboration below, on April 5.

WPO’s outreach travelled north last month with two special concerts to schools as part of Crawley Borough Council’s Pop-Up Culture initiative. And The International Interview Concerts, with Worthing Community Chest funding, took in Kamila Bydlowska (violin, Poland) and Olga Paliy (piano, Ukraine) to perform and teach the whole primary school in special presentations at Worthing’s English Martyrs Catholic and Clapham & Patching Cof E.

THE REMAINING REGULAR CONCERT SEASON

Tickets for all WSO and WPO concerts from www.wtm.uk

Saturday 29 March (7.30), The Boundstone Chorus (Aedan Kerney) – St Michael’s Church, South Lancing: ‘A Season to Sing’: Kerney, ‘A Song of the Seasons’; Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, ‘A Season To Sing’, choral re-imagining of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons violin concertos, on their 300th anniversary.

Saturday 5 April (7.30) Worthing Philharmonic Strings with trumpets, timpani, harp, organ (Dominic Grier) with Brighton16 Chamber Choir (Matthew Jelf) – St George’s Church, Worthing. Vaughan Williams, Mass in G minor; Howells, Elegy for String Orchestra; Duruflé, Requiem.

Sunday 6 April (2.45), Worthing Symphony (John Gibbons), Assembly Hall: Haydn, Symphony No 30 ‘Alleluia’; Malcolm Arnold, Guitar Concerto (Craig Ogden); Vivaldi, Mandolin Concerto (Craig Ogden); Mozart, Symphony No 41 ‘Jupiter’.

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.