REVIEW: Sorcery, Magic & Fireworks concert by Worthing Symphony Orchestra
REVIEW BY Richard Amey
‘Sorcery, Magic & Fireworks’ concert by Worthing Symphony Orchestra at The Assembly Hall on Sunday 1 November 2026 in their 100th Season; leader Julian Leaper, conductor John Gibbons, piano soloist in Gershwin, Julian Jacobson (replacing Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, sidelined by hand tendonitis).
John Williams, Quidditch from Harry Potter film series; Saint-Saëns, Bacchanale from opera Samson and Delila; Offenbach, Barcarolle from opera The Tales of Hoffman; Malcolm Arnold, Tam o’ Shanter Overture; Gershwin, Rhapsody In Blue; Grieg, In The Hall Of The Mountain King from play Peer Gynt incidental music; Dukas, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice; Danny Elfman, A Nightmare Before Christmas; Ravel, Bolero.
Scotland scooted off with the concert highlight honour on Sunday ahead of its rivals in this themed concert programme from the Middle East, Germany/Italy, the US, Norway and France. And not just for fun. There was stacks of foreign suavity, guile, colour, intrigue, fantasy, feasting and even orgying. But stone-cold reality from north o’ the border took the biscuit – and then soaked it in scotch.
The dazed oatcake dunker was Malcolm Arnold – yes, an Englishman but empathetic with, and ‘susceptible’ to, dare one add, the malted Scottish malaise. Had he and Robbie Burns been of the same century, their meet-ups would have defined their own single word in the Oxford Dictionary for ‘being the worse for the bottle’. As we’d guess, both men, in their Churchillian soberity tomorrow morning, would have sat down to beget superb composition and poetry.
But concerning the night(s) before, Burns himself in his Tam’ Shanter tale warns of the poured-out peril. And for everyone’s pleasure Arnold – the Kwai River Bridge composer with 9 symphonies and 80 film scores in his vault, unerringly demonstrates in graphic musical detail its entertainment advantages. So, from the WSO musicians’ fingertips, lips and lungs came Arnold’s expert images of Burns’ legend – of Tam o’ Shanter galloping boozily home from the pub, past a haunted church playing host to an orgy of warlocks and hair-grabbing witches, at the cost of his mare’s tail.
The WSO had a sheer ball, with reels, skirls, pipings, whoops and whooaha’s, a kirk bell, the mass lurching into intoxicated chaos across the whole sound stage, piccolo pairs and bassoons in flirty couplings and invoking the snappy Scots tunes. An instant hit on its 1955 premiere at the Proms, it stood out here now, in a formidable WSO programme of orchestral showpieces, and it only needs other orchestras, good enough to continue bringing it to public delight.
WSO conductor and musical director John Gibbons readily self-inflicted on himself and his players of the endurance test this concert was. An exhibition of different musical piece shapes, moods and sounds, all 9 of them laid out to excite, please and compel the listener. “To conduct each piece meant switching immediately to a different style, period and task,” he said afterwards. An agility of mindset required from start to finish. The pieces fed off each other and cross-linked, not always consecutively, and the distinctiveness of each took just one preparatory rehearsal with these crack musicians.
That ‘heeland’ chaos was just a differently-graded Scots cacophany to the opening bird’s-eye view of JK Rowling’s imaginary Harry Potter’s-world sporting match between wizards and witches on broomsticks, in seven-a-side team formation of 3 Chasers, 2 Beaters, a Keeper and a Seeker. Enough easily to inspire US composer John Williams’ Quidditch, from his Potter film score. One sided-thought: did Rowling get lexicon inspiration here from the band Camel’s ‘Sasquatch track?
Quidditch’s role was an all-brass fanfare and concert curtain raiser. It crashed on, with no musical stopping space for TV punditry, VAR, expert stats analysis, or action replays. Just wildly straight into your face, players flying everywhere, disputes, quarrels, goals being scored then either ruled-out or equalised, heroic tackles, dastardly fouls, clashings of broomstick woodwork.
It set a hot pace, and even if Quidditch didn’t descend into orgy, the second piece had debauched biblical revelry in the Bacchanale from Saint-Saëns as Samson is separated from Dalila as her blinded captive victim. Priests anticipating his sacrifice behave like delighted savages. Before the music took us to this gruesome indoors, Christopher O’Neal’s oriental oboe dropped us straight into a Middle Eastern market, then a Bedouin camp. Strange disorientating castanets further exoticised the sensation.
The scenarios that inspire resourceful composers like these! Gibbons next warned his audience that most people’s dream Venetian gondolier trip experience based on Offenbach’s lilting Barcarolle is audio trickery. The music ain’t what it seems, because this in this operatic gondola trip, storyteller Hoffman’s two female companions include a courtesan about to steal his soul by means of a magic mirror. The mysterious Hoffman’s Tales aren’t sweet bedtime fairy tales.
Tam o’Shanter came next, then Gershwin took the stage and rested the flow – more of which in a moment – before the interval. But here remember the concert title: ‘Sorcery, Magic & Fireworks’. Resuming, Grieg restored the deception. The pounding, so-familar dance In The Hall of the Mountain (troll) King is no darkly-lit ritual show but a grave threat to the guest Peer Gynt, himself am inveterate deceiver, because while he’s ‘nobly’ impressed the King enough to win his daughter, the dancing trolls seek his blood.
Multi cross-connections here: The Mountain King’s Hall from start to finish is one continuous crescendo, soft to loud. And so is the work set to close the afternoon, Ravel’s Bolero. The Grieg ends in a clash of knives, the Ravel a sighing, exhausted but triumphant collapse. Two bassoons (Ashley Myall, Simon Chiswell) stealthily warn us of impending menace when the Hall dance starts. Then the same way in the next piece they prance the mischievous dance of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice lad in another legend of Middle Eastern origin (this time Egypt), which became this famous showpiece, premiered at France’s Société nationale – the music body founded by Saint-Saëns – and told in such technicolor and instrumental reality that Disney plundered it into Fantasia.
And, in overriding the Apprentice’s orders to stop importing water, is the Sorcerer’s broom a soothsayer for Artificial Intelligence continuing just to do what it likes? And will we be lucky enough have a Sorcerer to rescue us in the nick of time?
The piece concluded in chastened quiet – but not the nightmare nor the links. Former Disney Animation employee Tim Burton dreamed up a poem about a ‘Halloween Town’ resident recruiting sceptical fellow residents to move into ‘Christmas Town’ and actually experience singing carols, making presents and building a sleigh for skeleton reindeer to pull. The purpose to convince them of their need to help him smile-up ‘Halloween Town’.
The resultant film music, The Nightmare Before Christmas, came from Danny Elfman (this concert cast obiously suited an elf) and his marvellous career story capped everything in the WSO’s always must-buy concert programme brochure and compensated for it omitting and biography of Paul Dukas. This edition, with the provenance of 9 pieces to detail, was a massive love labour and this edition showed the enormous distance in content and background today’s classical music world has travelled in the last 20 years of WSO’s 100.
The cinema/theatre/singing/acting/jazz/instrumental grounding of Elfman’s work creates in The Nightmare Before Christmas creates a tours de force for WSO. The Grammy Award-winning Elfman bestowed on cinema the scores for such as Batman, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow and Alice In Wonderland. Ample qualification for this concert’s theme. But without that knowledge from the 36-page WSO brochure (£3), it will have shocked and even frightened the listeners with its force in every aspect of musical strength WSO could muster. With the WSO percussion instruments kitchen possibly its cluttered ever, needing 4 entwining players among an orchestra of 63 including harp and celeste, oboe d’amore and baritone, tenor and soprano saxophones, the entire panoply roared past in 8 minutes of audience incredulity at its humorous and visual power.
Yet with one piece still left, Ravel’s mesmeric Bolero, that second crescendo – which begins with only a snare drum and a flute – gave WSO tense respite as each awaited their turn to play correctly the tune nearly everyone in the audience knew, almost note for note.
The drummer, young WSO veteran Chris Blundell, has to play the exact same all through until the final few when the key rises outrageously, then subsides back to finish. Could YOU do that flawlessly for a whole quarter of an hour? The prospect must give percussionists their own nightmares, and this was surprisingly only Chris’ 6th time, he told me. It’s obviously a large mental stability human challenge of endurance and responsibility (let’s not contemplate handing anything over to AI here) and although I asked, Chris kept to himself the things he tells himself to think about to concentrate and keep the engine on the rails. He confirmed to me that it’s one of the top target roles in the ambitions of any new orchestral percussionist.
Such a far cry from striking a cymbal or a gong on an obvious downbeat. But we all now know Ravel’s wry intentions, having received the invitation to paint a scene like this. Basque region-born, he is the Parisian in a Spanish town backstreet bar, a female dancer on a table, gripping her every onlooker, her music building tension that hits ecstasy with that late key change.
For the WSO audience the live spectacle of Bolero was an unmatchable treat. Spotting then focusing on who in the orchestra’s now got the tune and what it sounds like, then, further on, which combination produces each particular sound and timbre that characterises it, feeling the whole inexorable building process. We hear no predictable Spanish castanets: the snare drum does that job, but evokes something memorably non-cliché. One’s eyes can’t be everywhere, and what I did see this time was the violins, violas and cellos – not all at the same time – strumming their ‘guitars’.
Every orchestral concert in Worthing tots up its own list of accomplishments – targets achieved, challenges overcome, anticipated or acts of fate. This being the fourth sell-out in the last seven concert months, two apiece by Worthing SO and Worthing Philharmonic, its assumed star personality attraction, pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason was injury-sidelined. But this produced a kind of outcome: the sea tide was running WSO’s way in their 100th Season celebration.
Talking of things not being what they seem, although Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue sits outside the grain of ‘Sorcery, Magic & Fireworks’, the WSO’s replacement soloist – plucked fortuitously from the celeste player’s chair – showed us sometimes we’ve come to view the Rhapsody as something it’s not. And his appearance provided an add-on local story fitting this centenary Worthing orchestral landmark. Read on!
Instead of Jeneba, 23, we had musical does-it-all, Julian Jacobson, 78. That’s a big difference in lifetime relationship with this 1925 piece that marks the start of jazz/blues-with-classical crossover activity in the concert hall. Gershwin had little time in which to write it. Julian had 10 days’ notice to re-learn this Rhapsody he stopped performing solo 30 years ago, but which nevertheless he stayed with, by performing its 4-hands and 2-pianos versions, and recording for SOMM. He also made 4-hands transcriptions of Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody and An American in Paris.
He’s a frequent recitalist and with this sudden WSO assignment aflame, he had to postpone his full-length Beethoven Diabelli Variations two days later at Brighton’s Chapel Royal until lunchtime 16 February. He’s the Jacobson who unprecedentedly gave all 32 Beethoven Sonatas in public on one day, from memory – and not just the once. He’s also a Royal Academy of Music and Birmingham Royal Conservatoire tutor, and in touch with younger-generation Rhapsody In Blue interpretation heard in the last two performances given in Worthing.
Unlike Jacobson’s generation, there are far more younger pianists well-versed in jazz and blues, studying it, loving it – thereby having an ease of performance of that element in the music. Now read Jacobson’s pedigree and his local story . . .
A teenager at Worthing High School for Boys in Broadwater Road, living at the east end of Durrington’s Burnham Road, does a paper paper round from Marshall’s newsagents at Thomas a Becket crossroads. He’s Julian Dawson. His parents are composers, his father Maurice an OBE, his mother Margaret Lyell a pianist and Royal Academy teacher.
Julian’s a gifted pianist in classical mode, but rebellious. He’s into rock n’ roll and also playing in the Worthing Youth Jazz Orchestra. When kindred spirit Keith Emerson leaves Worthing for London and rock stardom, Julian takes over Emerson’s piano seat in the senior Worthing Youth Jazz Orchestra. By 17, Julian’s also studying piano with Arthur Benjamin and composition with Lamar Crowson at The Royal Academy in London. Later, he was a founder member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra.
A modernist, “stultified by RAM teaching”, Julian then studies the same at Queens College, Oxford. He changes his name to Dawson-Lyell to avoid an already established pianist called Julian Dawson. Then, on discovering his true father, he becomes Julian Jacobson.
Jacobson stepped onto the Worthing stage last Sunday in a bright red jacket of Chinese silk with a counterchange yellow collar, and played Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue in a way to which taught Worthing a listening lesson. Our recent younger soloists, one of them particularly jogging and bobbing around to the rhythms in a way jazz/blues musicians don’t generally require, were orientated towards the jazz. Whereas Jacobson leaned more classically in following Gershwin’s compositional endeavour to blend the two. To blend, not homogenise: to create a hybrid when classical music was not ready for it, but jazz/blues assertively was, as Ravel had already been showing, and become Gershwin’s looked-to example.
Gibbons’ WSO were full of Broadway sidewalk swagger, occasionally almost over the top in brash enthusiasm. Yet whenever they stood back and left Jacobson on his ownsome, there he was, a thoughtful, open-minded classical pianist carefully cross-breeding the genres. He was classically lyrical, and yet, listening, I found myself looking over the shoulder of a jazz bar pianist quietly musing over some improvised material before the barman opened the door to the public.
Had Julian Dawson-Lyell-Jacobson’s view of Rhapsody altered in his 66 years of its acquaintance? “I like the way the professional jazz pianists like Andre Previn and Stewart Goodyear play it straight classical but with a jazz feel and a respect for Gershwin’s intention. Some classical pianists misread the point and jazz it up to be audience-friendly. Gershwin’s themes come from the god of melody. He composed it quickly and [in its jazz/blues-classical balance] it seems instinctively right, fresh and inspired, natural and unforced, with an energy that’s not artificial.”
Gershwin sent the piece into the classical world, where personal interpretation is an option for each different soloist, rewarding and often surprising for the listener. Jacobson reminded us of this, and that Rhapsody In Blue is blues co-habiting with classical, not in opposition and not the platform for a versatile pianist to display his jazz/blues chops to overshadow Gershwin’s classical personality. His encore was the piece with which, before he was 10, he won a piano class at Worthing Festival – Debussy’s first Arabesque.
Jacobsen-WSO’s account of the Rhapsody opened with a marvellously lazy slurred clarinet solo intro rendition from principal Ian Scott. It totted up a further triumph in this concert by a Scotsman. Evidently, Tam o’ Shanter hadn’t completely drained his glass.
Richard Amey
Tailpieces:
The WSO free Children’s Musical Workshop attracted a full house. These run for 7-11s from 2.15pm in the adjacent Gordon Room during each of the orchestra’s Assembly Hall concerts, freeing up parents to attend those. Workshop details here
The Gordon Room loos were opened during the 30-minute interval as an alternative to the Assembly Hall’s.
Principal trumpet for 20 years, TIM HAWES, under the WSO brochure’s ‘Player Spotlight’ . . . at age 8, a Salvation Army band cornettist after his doctor, misdiagnosing asthma, recommended the breath control wind and brass instruments engender. Early inspiration: French legend Maurice André.
Now long since, a freelance trumpeter in solo, theatre pit, ensemble or orchestral; modern or period instruments, conventional trumpet, piccolo or natural, working globally and domestically. Including concerts, tours abroad and recordings with Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, both London BBC orchestras, LPO and The Philharmonia (career highlight, with Italian conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli, a week in Vienna, a different Mahler Symphony each night).
Founder in 2021 of adventurous quintet & percussion Band In A Van.
His untiring all-time favourite work to play: Beethoven’s Eroica. His WSO highlights, thrilling in its “vast range of repertoire”: the Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony and Film Music concerts.
Next orchestral concerts at The Assembly Hall. All Sundays, WSO 2.45pm, WPO 3pm. Tickets from www.wtm.uk
WORTHING SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (basics as above) – conductor John Gibbons
3 January: ‘Viennese New Year Celebration’ ballroom and concert favourites and revived items
31 January 2027: ‘Borodin, Strauss & Bruckner’ – In the Steppes of Centra Asia, Horn Concerto No 1 (Ben Goldscheider, soloist), Symphony No 4 ‘Romantic’.
Ben Goldscheider fronts Britain’s young French horn player generation in the concerto and chamber ensemble world. Richard Strauss, who wrote his one horn concerto at age 18, the son of Munich’s leading player, lauded Mozart, whose four provided the model for Strauss’ masterly work of wit and wonder that in return would have enraptured Wolfgang. Bags of outdoors atmosphere in the exotic Borodin and the beloved, scenic and openly exciting, as well as soulful Bruckner – getting its second WSO/Gibbons outing.
WSO BRASS QUINTET – Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham 7pm
9 December: Christmas and brass classics. Tickets
WORTHING PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA (basics as above) – conductor Dominic Grier
29 November: ‘Visions of Virtuosity’ – Sir Hubert (‘I Was Glad’) Parry, Symphonic Variations; Sergei Rachmaninov, Piano Concerto No 3 in D minor (competition-winning soloist Ryan Sheng); Alexander Scriabin, Symphony No 2. Grier has become a Parry authority overnight. Rachmaninov whisks us into a favourite Russia we seek, where also, later, Scriabin’s five movements compress into three with its central slow one a long ‘garden of delight’, then its finale of genuine personal triumph.
13 December (with Worthing Choral Society, The Angmering Chorale, Sompting Village Primary School Choir): ‘Christmas at the Movies’ – film score music among the seasonal musical classics and carol favourites.
WORTHING CHORAL SOCIETY – musical director Aedan Kerney (17 years), associate Sam Barton
Saturday 14 November (7.30), at St George’s Church, Worthing. ‘A Winter’s Day and Night’ – Aedan Kerney pre-retirement concert, with Olly Parr piano, Sarah Davison cello. Including music by Kerney (A Heart Made Full), Eric Whiteacre (Sleep), Sarah Quartel (Winter’s Day, in 5 movements), Cecilia McDowell (cantata around familiar carols, A Winter’s Night). Also 2 solo cello pieces.
Book Online or pay on the door
THE ANGMERING CHORALE – conductor Dominic Grier
Saturday 14 November (7.30) at St Margaret’s Church, Angmering village: 50th Anniversary Concert with brass and strings, a concert featuring Rutter’s Gloria along with favourites by Handel from Messiah, Haydn’s The Heavens Are Telling (from The Creation), Charles Wesley’s Blessed Be The God and Father, Howard Goodall’s The Lord Is My Shepherd), John Stainer’s God So Loved The World, and Karl Jenkins’ In Flanders’ Fields.
Book online or call at 01903 776613. Tickets limited.
THE BOUNDSTONE CHORUS – director Aedan Kerney
Saturday 19 December (7.30) at St Michael and All Angel’s, South Lancing. ‘Christmas Celebration’ concert.
CHRIST CHURCH LUNCHTIMES (12.30-1.30, Tuesdays, Christchurch & Portland Roads; free admission, exit donations)
10 November: Rob Campkin violin & Evelina Ndlovu violin and piano
8 December: South Downs Folk Singers
DOROTTYA ETHERIDGE’S WARM CANDLELIT CHRISTMAS CELLO SHOW
12 December (6pm) at St Peter & St Paul’s Church, Rustington. Beautiful carols, festive favourites, familiar melodies. All re-imagined by Worthing’s Hungarian orchestral and solo cellist in her special intimate traditional Christmas offering to everyone – from Holy Night and Walking in the Air, to Carol of the Bells and Last Christmas.
THE INTERNATIONAL INTERVIEW CONCERTS
A necessary break is being taken until 2027! For the resumption, do contact as soon as you like if you have any skills and time to volunteer for this unique, innovative and popular Worthing non-profit small concerts organisation operating under its own charity. Just call the ICCs engine room at 01903 202331.