"Entertaining enlightenment" from Worthing Symphony Orchestra - review

Worthing Symphony Orchestra sells goosebumps. “I got them all down my arm when I heard those five cellos starting to play alone,” confessed one audience member.” Those cellos were uttering the first notes and opening minutes of the new WSO season. Goosebumps. Classical music’s stock in trade. Right from the off.

I have a policy, when attending a classical concert: I strive to listen to no music that day, beforehand, for maximum sensory readiness. Easily done if a morning coffee concert; special effort’s needed for anything later. I succeeded this time, but this person just reported on may well have heard much already on Sunday. Things this strong happen. They come with live orchestral concerts.

I got at least three goosebump sensations myself. My first was the trumpets bursting through the bushes and trees in an exhilarating fresh new key, to jolt into action the pastoral-slumbering Swiss political activists of William Tell.

My second came in the Rachmaninov finale. Masterstroke orchestrator, Sergei asks a percussionist in a special hushed passage of listener suspense, to clash in rhythm his two cymbals, as softly as humanly possible. It was so good I went afterwards to congratulate WSO’s Chris Blundell.

“Ahh, it’s an orchestral percussionist’s audition test piece,” he grinned. He paused for a few seconds. Then, “Once I was auditioning for The Hallé.” I was all ears. Percussionists often have great anecdotes. “I was young, and wearing a tie for the first time. It slid between the two cymbals . . .” Blundell’s CV of top orchestral jobs is impressive enough, even with The Hallé missing.

My third, similar to that first audience member’s experience, was when only four instruments were playing. The New World Symphony’s slow movement has several big moments, most of them quiet. The three trombones and tuba finally sum up the nocturnal solemnity in a solo chorale. In context, it’s a lump-in-the-throat job. As if not halting enough, Dvorak then asks his basses to play the ending alone, in harmony.

In the richly informative concert programme brochure, I learn Dvorak was inspired for this symphony by Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha and the song and dance music of the native red Indians, alongside the spirituals of the black workforce. Throughout what I am now affectionately tempted instead to call Dvorak’s Hiawatha Symphony, we are eating cake of these flavours mixed and blended with essences of his own Bohemian homeland music.

WSO director John Gibbons asked the audience to interpret for themselves the New World’s last chord, which is a full hammer blow with an unexpected, ambiguous afterglow. It could simply be a composer presenting his chord with strings stripped back, silent. Or it could have been a triumphal last word, to Europe from America, overlaid with the regret and longing of Dvorak’s homesickness – to which he gave unique vent in closing his contemporaneous Cello Concerto.

With full brass and timpani unleashed sometimes brashly, from the explosive first moment onwards, the WSO’s mere eight first violins tackled the odds in one of their top-achieving afternoons. And why not? This orchestra is of London’s revered community of world-envied professional classical musicians. “You don’t need to go to London to hear a good orchestra when you can drive five miles to hear this one,” commented that already-quoted, goosebumped lady.

Conductor John Gibbons’ audience lap up his conversations with them between pieces. He made a familiar opening remark about his and Elgar’s Wolverhampton Wanderers. Lo and behold, what should pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, 19, be kitted out in but close-shaped golden gown, shoulder-to-toe in sequins, flared at the hem, wearing long black braids and modest pumps. [Wolves don’t play in red]

She was out injured for her Worthing debut last season but WSO fans are collecting the set of Kanneh-Mason calling cards. Of Nottingham’s best cultural export since Robin Hood, Jeneba follows to Worthing her elder siblings Isata (piano, Clara Schumann Concerto in 2019), Sheku (cello, Elgar 2018, Saint-Saens 2019), and Braimah (violin, Mozart’s 3rd. March). An aunt was among the audience standing and cheering Jeneba’s latest delivery of the western world’s favourite concerto.

In the left hand strong and insistent, in the right glittering and resilient, she was both implacable and tenderly expressive to the end, amid sometimes overflowing WSO ardour. It’s the romantic concerto probably most favoured and accomplished by teenaged talent, but one that’s much the sweeping sum of its parts. Ahead we anticipate hearing Jeneba in those offering more open scope for pianistic characterisation and individuality.

As well as Rachmaninov’s ‘Brief Encounter Concerto’ raising red-blooded goosebumps, there was global warming. Early September’s sunshine angle of fire heated the Hall hotter than winter with radiators on and snow outside. The result? Not only programmes fanning the audience, but the black dicky-bowed WSO men emerged from the interval jacketless. An almost shocking precedent. I wondered if the threat of lightning industrial action might have forced the lifting of the WSO’s dogged dress code.

The audience took drinks to their seats to sip happily and Gibbons offered those without special- offer new season tickets still the chance to buy, with this concert’s cost deducted. The WSO strings combined in the first few minutes of Vaughan Williams’ beloved Tallis Fantasia in a surprise taster of the next concert.

This’ll feature the cor anglais of Olivia Fraser – here the Hiawatha Symphony’s Hovis advert soloist, having earlier cast the English Horn’s bucolic spell in Rossini’s William Tell, first sounded in Paris 1829 – which surely prompted Frenchman Berlioz’s equally striking use of it a year later in Symphonie Fantastique.

Five faint strikes of the Town Hall clock synchronised in time with Dvorak’s latter stages as the Symphony stormed beyond the normal WSO 5pm finishing line. But all was well in the WSO world now back on the calendar. None had minded Gibbons talking on a little this time – it was far too interesting. Unlike conductors who tighten their lips and ignore helping their audiences.

This entertaining enlightenment is what Gibbons has introduced to Worthing’s classical musical scene. Like The International Interview Concerts where it’s the performing guest artiste who opens things up for the audience in conversation. On Saturday, comes the Last Night of The Proms. The most potent part of the evening is often what the conductor has to say.

Richard Amey

Jeneba rehearsal shot by Robert Millett: (19) Facebook

October 2, WSO ‘Autumn Colours’ concert (same venue, day, time, conductor): Grieg, Holberg Suite; Vaughan Williams, 6 Studies in English Folksong, Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis; Alwyn, Autumn Legend (soloist Olivia Fraser); Richard Strauss, Metamorphosen for 23 strings (lamenting his old Germany wrecked in WW2).

October 9, Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra & Choir with The Merry Opera Company, (Assembly Hall, 6pm): Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado. Conductor, Dominic Grier.