Worthing Symphony Orchestra delights under stand-in conductor

Worthing Symphony Orchestra ‘Romantic Classics’ Concert at The Assembly Hall (2.45pm), Sunday April 24, 2022; guest conductor Hilary Davan Wetton; violin soloist Cristian Grajner de Sa.

Beethoven, Egmont Overture Op84; Bruch, Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor Op26; Mendelssohn, Symphony No 3 in A ‘Scottish’ Op56.

It’s 22 years and some 160 consecutive concerts since musical and artistic director John Gibbons last missed conducting the monthly WSO concert at Worthing. But he was there listening as his elder associate formed a grain of Worthing musical history and made his own mark on the WSO fans – who came confident of Gibbons’ choice of deputy, just as they trust his monthly choice of music.

This popular programme was what Hilary Davan Wetton (say the middle name in the rhythm of ‘Devon’) devised six months ago after a call saying Gibbons would be recording on this day in Latvia with the Lepāja Symphony Orchestra for Toccata Classics. Covid clobbered those foreign plans but grabbing back your gig from your appointed substitute ain’t cricket. Gibbons supports Hampshire CCC, and so he joined the audience . . .

Davan Wetton came unknown to probably most of Worthing audience. Introducing himself after the Overture, with an excitement scarcely hidden for a greatly experienced orchestral and choral conductor, he quickly told his listeners how lucky they were to have such an orchestra and such an acoustically superior venue (“one of the finest halls in England”), and that he hoped they’d be continually spreading the word.

Gibbons reported: “I sat in several different places during the concert and it was very interesting how well the orchestra sounded everywhere in the hall. Especially pleasing was that on the resonant front extension of the stage the cellos – only three of them – made such a huge sound, which was was increasingly rich.”

Davan Wetton, a tall figure with flopping, side-parted hair, sometimes widespread arms, and with a large, ready and witty personality, immediately gave the audience a bubbling sense of sharing eagerly his music with them. “Mendelssohn’s probably the most neglected of the famous composers. This is my favourite Mendelssohn Symphony – you can hear him reacting to his experiences in Scotland. It’s full of passion. And who better to play it for you now than Worthing Symphony Orchestra?”

And passion was duly drawn from a professional orchestra, some familiar with Davan Wetton, others not. With colour and urgency, affection and fervour, this full-blooded performance persuaded that this Scottish matches, even possibly outscores, this hyper-observant and responsive composer’s Italian Symphony (No 4) in content and emotional range.

On his inspirational visit north of the border, you could hear in the music that Mendelssohn intuitively perceived and almost divined the spirit and fire of the Scots temperament alongside the gritty, rain-lashed physicality of their native territory, plus the taste and plenty of their nourishment and cultural festivity.

There was solemnity of recollection in grievous loss at some historical wrong turns, injustices or heavy battlefield tolls. WSO’s opening chorale came simply beautiful in sonority, balance, dignity and portent. Their slow movement spoke for the glen strewn with the fallen, their dancing in the second movement bordered on a ceilidh unbound, their finale a return to the defence of the clan and a victorious rejoicing. Throughout, the slightly outnumbered strings fought back tooth and nail, against the woodwind and horns, fife and drum, fronted by WSO principal clarinettist Ian Scott – he of that very nationality.

So, who was this Hilary Davan Wetton, bringing audience cheers and whoops at this sudden Scottish victory? A septuagenarian of British musical action and particular English distinction in battle. Conductors do not wither as they age: they grow. A founder of city orchestra and capital choir, and a sword-waving activist and champion of Everychild’s musical education, being already the 25-years director of Classical Roadshow and long associated with the National Children’s Orchestra.

He is associate conductor of the London Mozart Players, going back 52 years. Guests with the BBC Concert Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Recently also with the Hanover Band period instruments orchestra. And,”one of my career highlights”, St Matthew Passion with his own City of London Choir plus Chichester Choristers in Chichester Cathedral.

A perceptive concert programmer, lately teaming in series Haydn’s masterpiece late Masses with Mozart’s likewise mature Piano Concertos. The creator of RPO’s 2017 classical chart-topping album ‘The Nation’s Favourite Carols’, featuring the City of London Choir he has long-since founded and directed. Currently apposite, that same year those same forces issued Haydn’s Nelson Mass and Mass in Time of War on the RPO label.

His conducting action, more physically expansive than Gibbons’ own, betrays Davan Wetton’s choral work in the high arching arms above his head, to call fullness from the singers placed behind and above the orchestra – on Sunday, it was for the wind and brass sitting above the strings.

His lengthy baton echoes his 60 hours of conductor’s training under Sir Adrian Boult – he of the long stick. His affinity with the LMP (the WSO’s Chris O’Neal is also LMP’s principal oboe) he gently coincides with LMP late founder Harry Blech’s characteristic method of withdrawing the baton from his firing line during quieter passages and holding it in his left hand.

Other fruits of his own career come in Davan Wetton’s 2021 book ‘Reflections on Conducting’, his Classic FM programme ‘Masterclass’, his teaching of the organ to comedian Jo Brand in ‘Play It Again’ on BBC1, his British and American talks conveying conducting as a metaphor for management.

Moments before Sunday’s concert began, instead of only the pair of horns present in the five cloth-cut concerts since the lockdown lifting, the sight of four warming up was a stirring one. The Huntsmen and Huntswomen of the WSO were to be in ominous double force for all three pieces coming up.

Paired in couples, their power was vehement in Count Egmont’s doomed Flanders heroism against the Spanish, it was hotly passionate in Bruch’s beloved Violin Concerto, then magisterial and many other things in the Scottish Symphony.

In the Bruch Concerto, Italian-Portuguese 24-year-old Cristian Grajner de Sa teamed not for the first time with Davan Wetton. A highly decorated graduate of the Royal College of Music, he is a young man whose experience of this universal favourite will progressively encourage increased projection of his role and interpretation.

On Sunday, he voiced it unshowily but straight down the line with controlled emotional commitment, within the so-often symphonically united force of the orchestra ablaze in this definitive Romantic outpouring, indelibly seared onto the world’s hearts.

Richard Amey

Masks no longer obligatory, and audience members much more confident without them, the reopening-up of classical orchestral concerts, having lagged behind solo or chamber-scale concerts ticket uptake, is underway.

The next and final WSO concert of the season brings Dinara Klinton back to Worthing for her previously pandemic-postponed appearance in Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 3. The young Moscow and London-conservatoired Ukrainian, already a professor at the Royal College of Music and a BBC Radio 4 guest analyst, was a 2015 finalist in Worthing’s Sussex International Piano Competition. She has since returned in previous concerto action with WSO and been the subject of an International Interview Concert.

WSO followers will be interested to hear her interpretation of this large work, following that by the Competition’s 2013 winner Poom Prommachart, the Thai artiste who, including in that Competition Grand Final, has actually played it here twice. Klinton’s recording career is already blooming, with accounts of Liszt’s Transcendental Studies and Prokofiev’s Complete Piano Sonatas hailed of startling quality by opinions that count.

So, it’s . . . Sunday May 22 (Assembly Hall, 2.45pm), ‘May Jubilations’: conductor John Gibbons, piano Dinara Klinton – Elgar, Imperial March; Rachmaninov, Piano Concerto No 3; Rossini, overture William Tell; Dvorak, Symphony No 8.

And also . . . Saturday, May 14 (Arundel Cathedral, 7.30pm) London-based Invicta Voices, and cappella choir, singing for St Barnabas House and Worthing’s ‘Turning Tides’ charity for the homeless a programme including Eric Whiteacre’s When David Heard and Elgar’s Lux Aeterna.

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