REVIEW: Worthing Festival Concert by Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra

REVIEW BY Richard Amey. Worthing Festival Concert by Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra at Assembly Hall on Saturday 7 June 2025 (7.30pm), leader Simon Hewitt Jones, musical director Dominic Grier, solo piano Julian Chan. Beethoven, Egmont Overture; Chaloner-Hughes, ‘Florestan’ for Orchestra; Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No 1 in Bb minor (Chan); Robert Schumann, Symphony No 2 in C major.

ONE OF the heaviest warhorses of the classical concert world reared out of its stallion stable on Saturday night, and an apprentice jockey on this Derby Day rode it to storming and inevitable victory. Julian Chan was the Malaysian on the mount, performing Tchaikovsky’s famous First Piano Concerto and for the first time outside a conservatoire. It was a spectacular watch, the jockey’s seat frequently leaving the saddle, his perspiring hands needing occasional wiping dry, but his grip on the reins remaining reliable – as per his pedigree.

Composing since he was six, at the Royal Academy for his training, startling audiences with his formidably adventurous and colourful virtuoso solo repertoire, he is now in his twenties. But Chan remained unseen, cantering from the parade ring away to the starting line while WPO were stirring up vicious conflict, with F minor venom leading to fiery C major martyrdom. This was Beethoven’s battling Overture salute to Goethe’s defiant Dutch count, Egmont – who finally went down to the invading Spanish, but with his oratory tongue fully ablaze. Judging by their fearless commitment and vehemence, the WPO were definitely on his side.

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As the runners and rider lined up, still out of sight, WPO provided a repeat performance of ‘Florestan’, the thoughtful and perceptive case made by Worthing’s Ansel Chaloner-Hughes – himself an apprentice composer at still only 18 – for Beethoven’s lesser-celebrated political prisoner of that name in his opera Fidelio. World Premièred by WPO only in October, as a sort of action analysis straight after Fidelio’s sister Overture Leonore No 3, here today, for ‘Florestan’, was the composer’s luxury of an almost immediate second hearing by the orchestra who have him as their Resident Composer. Although this time as a follow-up to Egmont.

WPO director Dominic Grier declared in his programme notes: “I firmly believe in giving new music more than just a single performance.”

It would have been easy to scoff that Florestan had wandered in after the wrong drama, but one freedom fighter bears essentially the same scars and bruises as the next, and ‘Florestan’ speaks of determination, fortitude, speaking truth to power and the striking of blows for liberty. Chaloner-Hughes himself was on stage beating the deep bass drum among the percussion section. Hearing the palatable music of the town’s Man Of The Musical Moment is what will continue, to the betterment of Worthing’s artistic growth.

The applause dying down, audience attention switched, focus resharpened. This was to be Julian Chan’s second appearance on this same racecourse, having ridden Rachmaninov’s Third Concerto to triumph with WPO in this same hall two years ago. The Derby is a flat race but Tchaikovsky One has some serious jumps, most needing taking at speed and on the very edge of security. To those knowing where these jumps arrive, and their height, it was of riveting interest to see the apprentice bracing himself for each. And then to see him make real sparks spray, and to realise then why his racing trainer had confidently selected him.

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“We’re relieved he didn’t take the finale as fast as he did in rehearsal,” agreed the front desk of WPO’s 2nd Violins, Michelle Willis and Rachel Purdie. The speed that Chan and Grier took it was still enough to blur the grandstand cameras’ coverage. But this was no mere technical demonstration of daredevil double-octaves, or just a young brave revelling in his scorching sharpness in scherzando mode. It created electricity throughout the performance, but as soon as Lorna Denman’s solo flute lured the soloist into her reverie world Chan showed another side of his sensitivity. With him, the WPO winds principals and cello quartet came into their own and the required emotional balance had been struck.

Urgency and power marked Chan’s final furlongs after the home turn, and if his aim and impulse led the orchestra a dance throughout the piece, his knuckles were already white and soon, so became everyone else’s – as Tchaikovsky fully intended.

I will not have been the only person at this concert to thank Dominic Grier and WPO for grabbing me by the collar and forcing me to listen to a Schumann Symphony which had failed to breach my perception defences. So often, it’s hearing something played live, free of peripheral distractions, that floats the boat. According to Grier’s research, WPO aren’t to blame: they’ve never played Schumann’s Symphony No 2, which is chronologically his last. His recommendation in the programme read: “In my view it is a real masterpiece of symphonic writing and a great personal favourite.” Hearing that from an interpreting conductor wins your trust and confidence.

In his advocacy, Grier galvanised WPO into their best performance of the evening, and Schumann especially demanded of the feverishly industrious strings at the point when a first movement of fervent rhythmic and expressive strength, and utmost vitality, ends in triumph . . . only for the next movement to prance in with no let-up in the pace and activity, if anything even ramping up the excitement, and with new flavour. Again the winds delivered in the enriching slow movement, whose slightly rambling closing page appeared its only slackening of emotional concentration.

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Would Schumann be able to convince in the finale? It is the symphonic composer’s ultimate challenge if the previous movements are successful. In Grier’s reading, Schumann does. “I first began to feel myself again,” Schumann had admitted. His characteristic melancholy emerges but counterbalanced by confident determination and intent, reminiscent of his vintage years.

Beethoven is an obvious continuing influence on the music, and Bachian counterpoint an increasing inner presence. Excellent programme notes author Tim Schofield tells us Schumann had now started composing in his comparatively silent head, instead of habitually at his probably over-insistent keyboard. But that he had still needed Mendelssohn to coax from him his final completing effort. The WPO brass finally got their evening’s reward in Schumann’s jubilant homecoming.

It’s easy to suppose that composing this, his fourth symphony finally put paid to Robert Schumann’s sanity. It took several break-offs amid recurrent mental instability and distress before accomplishing his final penstrokes. After that he was consigned to his closing destination, the asylum, where he was forbidden visits by his wife Clara, although not from his protege and close family friend and professional colleague Johannes Brahms.

We cannot know if that was a character indictment of Clara, who was Europe’s then greatest female concert pianist and a female composer screened off by male society and authority, or plain primitive patriarchy in medical judgment and practice. But facile understanding or interpretation of mental illness might lead one to expect this four-movement swansong, to comprise disconcerting reams of mal-orchestrated chaos or musings, bound together only loosely by knots of momentary cohesion and flashes of lucidity.

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Far from it. On Dominic Grier’s watch, in charge of his WPO, this Saturday night will have been a turning point for a great many listeners hitherto confused or, worse, misguided by the camps of academic Robert Schumann Symphony knockers in their received wisdom.

This concert closed WPO’s orthodox season – but orthodox is no longer them. They’re not crawling away to rest after the spring. Grier is now directing and reviving the Angmering Chorale. Find, below, a recently bolted-on Sunday afternoon up a great many people’s streets. Let further boats be floated!

Richard Amey

Upcoming concerts

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 by these two, but also two pieces by other composers. 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): Joanna Forbes L’Estrange’s choral re-imagining of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons – ‘A Season to Sing’. Choral favourites Zadoc The Priest (Handel) and How Lovely Are Thy Dwellings (Brahms). Also Sam Barton’s Heaven, and Elgar’s Give Unto The Lord. Plus a song selection from St Andrew’s CofE High School Choir, directed by Mattea Leow. Tickers from www.trybooking.com/uk/DXQQ

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Sunday 29 June (3pm), Angmering Chorale and Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra, at Worthing Assembly Hall. Handel, Zadok The Priest; Mozart, Symphony No 31 in D ‘Paris’; Haydn, Te Deum C; Mozart, Requiem.

Tickets from www.wtm.uk

Christ Church Lunchtime Series (Worthing, 12.30)

Tuesday 8 July, Yoko Ono piano

Tuesday 12 August, South Downs Folk Singers

Tuesday 23 September, John Collins organ

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