Worthing Symphony Orchestra offer A Prayer for Ukraine

Worthing Symphony Orchestra ‘Mainly Mozart’ concert at The Assembly Hall, Sunday 13 March 2022 (2.45pm), leader Julian Leaper, conductor John Gibbons. Soloists: Braimah Kanneh-Mason violin, Monica McCarron flute, Elizabeth Green harp. WSO: 19 strings, plus horns Dave Lee & Jane Hanna, oboes Christopher O’Neil & Leslie Rogers.

Mozart, Adagio & Fugue in C minor K564; Elgar, Serenade for Strings Op20; Mozart, Violin Concerto No 3 in G K216; Haydn, Symphony No 36 in Eb; Mozart, Concert for Flute & Harp in C K299.

Amid the continuous flow of attractive WSO concerts that have for at least a decade led the orchestral way along the Sussex coastline, this one rewarded the 25% more fans who curbed their Covid caution. Despite Omicron cases resurging, particularly among older population, this tempting WSO offering hoisted their crowd back up to 94% of its pre-pandemic average. Three weeks before, their Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert had achieved 69%.

Read on and decide if it was just the music that made this happen.

Two of WSO’s own orchestral number gifted to the town, and their own colleagues (more later on this), the singular jewel of the Mozart Flute & Harp Concert. Fans long to hear it live – but so many die not having seen their chance. The eldest male sibling among the Kanneh-Mason family debuted at WSO with a Mozart Concerto that in pristine freshness arguably out-Springs that of Vivaldi’s Fourth Season.

The Gibbons belated new phase of enthusiasm for Mozart and Haydn is giving this audience what classical crowds normally miss – the earlier, much less hackneyed, yet sometimes purer, work by these men of such bursting ideas, untrammelled vitality and exciting adventure in their earlier mature years. Their warhorse pieces habitually trundled out elsewhere, this constitutes a new WSO programming plus-point.

Revealing the swelling buds of Haydn’s dramatic and infectious ‘Storm and Stress’ middle period among his 100+ Symphonies, his totally unfamiliar, 17-minute No 35 – which the WSO will have sight-read at morning rehearsal – pinged the orchestra into bubbling first-movement action. They trod with dignity through the second movement, escorted by Julian Leaper and Miriam Lowbury’s soloing violin and cello, but almost swaggered through the minuet. Then their finale took us out for a brisk Sunday afternoon blow along Worthing seafront after a liquid lunch.

Until Jeneba Kanneh-Mason’s wrist injury ruled her out of Mozart’s even more unfamiliar Piano Concerto No 6, in what would also been her WSO debut, following those of Isata and Sheku, we now met big brother violinist as Jeneba’s stand-in. Pronounce Braimah ‘Brymer’ – like the clarinet legend, Jack.

Ahead of Braimah comes his much publicised, although not unusual, modern-day family reputation for a multi-cultural shaped musical ethos. Together they have recorded a version of Bob Marley’s reggae Redemption Song, and Braimah told me that (like many violinists) he enjoys playing folk music, including the Klezmer music of Jewish social life, heard in many European countries and typified by Fiddler on the Roof.

He has less concerto experience than shooting star Sheku (cello) or more recently-stellar Isata (piano), but Braimah quickly settled into his Mozart Concerto. It allows him no relaxation but his chamber music experience helped, seen at various points, especially when he turned to the first violins when handing over the music to them.

Stage presence? Today in brown shirt, front and tail out, black trousers and semi-casual dark blue shoes, he’s nearly 6ft 2in, performs standing straight upright, feet mostly together, composed and contained, expanding his stance when physical demands and emotional moments arrive.

He and WSO brought a bright yet carefully harnessed first movement; left-hand vibrato coming only in Braimah’s longest-held notes, then sparingly, avoiding romanticising the slow movement, letting it speak eloquently for itself; and in the finale – actually, in the work overall – an avoidance of exaggerating the decorative style of the solo music.

So his performance felt more of an ensemble effort that that of a virtuoso and dominant star soloist. This is a concerto about fleetness of foot and expression within a fast-moving flow of musical ideas. Mozart left no cadenzas. Braimah’s own were in matching style and wisely economical.

Afterwards, I asked which of Mozart’s other four Concertos he’d jump at to perform. He named a different animal: the Turkish No 5. “It’s the most substantial in its technical demands,” he said. “The second movement is very beautiful – and its Turkish finale is wilder!”

OK then, Braimah, choose any other concerto . . . “Probably the Bruch No 1. I feel that Romantic concertos connect with me, and also, this one is especially wonderful to hear live.” [See next WSO concert, below . . .]

Conductor John Gibbons’ artistic response to the grave new world affairs paved a different route towards this Concerto. Before even the first notes of the concert were played, he wrote in the brochure, “The vast majority of Russian classical musicians are distraught at the destruction. Many have relatives on both sides of the conflict and wish merely to see peace and calm, return to the region.”

He mentioned two Ukrainians from the Sussex International Piano Competitions in Worthing, London-based Olga Paliy and Dinara Klinton [see also below] whose home cities were under attack, Paliy’s parents apparently having lost their chance to escape.

Referring to famous Russian composers, some oppressed by their government authorities, some who went into exile abroad, Gibbons from the rostrum declared at the outset to his audience: “We will play Russian music here because it is music [applause broke in here] and because their music is telling us how we should be leading our lives.”

Then, to begin the occasion, an addition to the programme. Gibbons’ own arrangement for strings, horns and oboes, created in the hours since directing a choral piece earlier in the week at St Albans: ‘A Prayer for Ukraine’ by 19th Century Ukrainian composer Mikola Lysenko to a text by Oleksandr Konynsky. A third week into the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, the audience listened silently in renewed shock to a gentle hymn for peace – apparently pressed into relevant service since 1885, when Imperial Russia did not want Ukrainian spoken.

Light then faded further. On strings only, WSO played Mozart’s mature Adagio & Fugue. This Adagio could be the most austere, disturbing musical texture the composer ever unloaded across his instrumental, operatic and choral output. The Bachian Fugue, austere, sombre, imbued the concert with its first feeling of forward motion and resolve.

Then, within the severity of these moments, very personal Elgar music eased the anguish, in the hands of a spiritual and practising Elgarian. His Serenade for Strings, uncannily never before on the WSO’s music stands under this conductor, drifted around The Assembly Hall as breathable balm, into the lungs and senses of an audience who had come here to grasp the restorative therapy of classical music in a disturbing and fearful time.

With Elgar’s tenderly amiable, contented two outer movements framing a pensive central one conveying the composer’s serious oneness with solitude down by the river Teme, Gibbons ensured Mozart’s Violin Concerto, coming next, would land on warmer audience soil.

Nearly an hour later, after the interval and Haydn’s sunshine, Mozart’s unique Flute & Harp Concerto concluded the afternoon in its smiling, fairy-spell way. If I say that the concert’s tea and scones had finally arrived, it’s me knowing that lunch and cake played a part – served up in the forerunning week by harpist Elizabeth Green as in East London she hosted Chiswick-based flautist Monika McCarron in the two soloists’ rehearsing.

Monika rejoiced in this fact when we chatted after the performance and may still have had the taste in her mouth when she said she fondly hoped for more opportunities to perform with Elizabeth. Both are WSO principal members, as is clarinettist Ian Scott who played Weber’s Concertino with WSO in October.

The harp in this music? Hearing it, you think you’ve arrived in heaven. The flute? Its fluttering, laughing and singing tells you something about humanity. Green and McCarron created both glittering and molten gold, on American instruments handmade for them around 16 years ago – Green, a bronze Lyon & Healey Style 23 harp; McCarron, a Lillian Burkent flute with silver keys and fittings but a tube and mouthpiece of gold.

McCarron’s sound was an astonishment of seamless, liquid smoothness and when I remarked on this, she said, “That is exactly the sound I am aiming for. The gold enables me to get the sound I want with less effort. There are gold flutes in European and Scandinavian orchestras but not many in Britain.

“I’ve played this piece since I was 13 and lucky to have a harpist at my school,” to which Green added: “It’s something every harpist knows, and you always dream of playing it.

“Ever since the orchestra knew it was coming up,” said McCarron, “they’ve been telling us they can’t wait to hear us playing it with them. And from our point of view, today, we know it’s so special to play for your friends and colleagues, as well as others in the audience who have come to hear you.”

Both were in full-length dresses, McCarron in cap-sleeved midnight blue with Green in black satin and sleeveless. McCarron has a characteristic gentle half-smile which, during the music, when she wasn’t playing, remained on her face as she looked at the audience and savoured the all-too fleeting experience.

Important info: in the absence of any by Mozart, consecutively, their elaborate duetting cadenzas were by Dutch Concertgebouw conductor Marius Flothuis, then Welsh harpist John Thomas, then German composer Carl Reinecke.

Green’s ever active harp was a skipping, dancing and punctuating foil to the flute. Possibly thinking of the middle movement when the two instruments converse intimately, she had a return question for me: which was my favourite movement? Answer: I’ve known this concerto long enough not to have one! I’ve seen its magic at work.

A tip: I arranged some wedding music. The bride entered the church to the middle movement. The groom, waiting at the altar . . . hearing . . . watching her slowly approach . . . melted into sobbing tears. The couple went tripping out to the happy finale, united.

Richard Amey

Next WSO (same venue, time, Box office 01903 203203 or wtam.uk):

April 24 ‘Romantic Classics’, guest conductor Hilary Davan Wetton – Beethoven, overture Egmont; Bruch, Violin Concerto No 1 (soloist Christian Grajner de Sa); Mendelssohn, Symphony No 3 ‘Scottish’.

Wetton is a British conductor, prominent in Surrey and Kent, an orchestral and choral founder in Milton Keynes, where Gibbons conducted his MK Chorale. For only the second time in his long tenure, Gibbons will not conduct a WSO concert – although he will be in the audience: ironically, his recording session in Latvia for the Toccata label has since been postponed. In 2000, Gibbons was in South Africa conducting the opera La Boheme. The deputy? Nicholas Cleobury, brother of the late Stephen, the Kings College Cambridge choir director.

May 22 ‘May Jubilations’, conductor John Gibbons – Elgar, Imperial March; Rachmaninov, Piano Concerto No 3 (soloist Dinara Klinton); Rossini, overture William Tell; Dvorak, Symphony No 8.