REVIEW: Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra offer Nordic Adventures

Jean Sibelius (Finn), Introduction to Kullervo Op 7 (In portrait, Hero darkly envisages his quest-journey and his end); Carl Nielsen (Dane), Act 2 Prelude to Saul and David I (Heraldic gesture and statement as Hero arrives at a famed king’s court); Sibelius, Violin Concerto in D minor Op 47 (violinist Hero entertains the court, portraying landscapes and tales, real and imaginary). Interval: the court (audience) acclaim and discuss in merriment

Nielsen, Helios Overture Op 17 (Hero dreams of an inspiring sunrise, which happens); Edvard Grieg (Norwegian), Peer Gynt Op 20 exerpts – Homeward journey, Shipwreck, Morning Mood, Anitra’s Dance, In the Hall of The Mountain King (Hero’s adventures: pirate attack, shipwreck, enchantress, her prophesied slaying by him of a dragon, meeting a fair maiden);

Hugo Alfvén (Swede), Uppsala (Swedish) Rhapsody No 2 Op 24 (liberated dragon-oppressed villagers laud Hero in festivities and his wedding); Grieg, Wedding Day at Troldhaugen Op 65 No6 (their garland dance for him); Sibelius, Lemminkäinen Suite Op 22: Lemminkäinen’s Return.

The classical music offering of Worthing needs no longer to be a matter for modesty. Its steady expansion in range since 2010 blossomed on Sunday in the fresh spring of an arriving new instrumental concert idea. WPO music director and conductor Dominic Grier’s triumph was not through a customarily loose theming of selected music but a verbally outlined story that stirred the imagination in a vivid, dramatic sequence of musical illustration and realisation, effectively semi-staged.

These last 14 years there have been plenty of concerts bearing the frisson of expectation of familiar music revisited, accompanied by less-known pieces of trusted quality and interest presented by the performing artistes – the Worthing Symphony and Philharmonic orchestras and their directors John Gibbons and Dominic Grier.

But Nordic Adventures ‘A Hero’s journey in Music’ created the additional anticipatory tremor of an upcoming new concert experience, forged by still a new young face in Worthing arts, Dominic Grier, from commonly under-estimated, less well-trodden western music – that from the norse myth, legend and life of Scandinavia. It was an event to identify the straitjacketed classical concert fans from the willingly curious. Nearly 400 of the latter went away hugely rewarded.

The power and appeal of these four composers’ music, enhanced by the spoken narration and selectively electrified and emotionally underlined by Grier’s planned lighting, created an exciting sweep. The audience’s overall experience and exhilaration was voiced afterwards by a lady with a walking stick descending the Assembly Hall steps outside and commenting, “It makes you want to go out and climb Everest, doesn’t it?”

Grier has devised Nordic Adventures by rekindling the passionate imagination of his youth when stirred originally by this music and mythology. His target is our own adult yearning to hear a good epic story, and he pairs one with fine and effective music that works beyond mere soundtrack because into the bargain we hear it unedited for its maximum intended concert-hall effect.

His tale comes as his own poem, read to the audience, describing his conjured hero’s relishing and endurance of tests and examinations en route to a glorious homecoming. And in a neat crafting by the author, the hero momentarily steps out of the narrative into the flesh, as guest in a strange monarch’s court, to perform one of the repertoire’s great violin concertos for his supper.

Few there will forget the end of too many years awaiting a Worthing delivery of the acutely distinctive Sibelius Violin Concerto, nor the physical and sensory transition from darkness to light as Helios Overture opened the second half, and the hero’s new day. That music will have stoked appetites for further Nielsen from the WPO, following his Four Temperaments Symphony last season, and may eventually bring momentously to Worthing his No 4, The Inextinguishable.

The WPO’s own professional leader Preston Yeo has the hugely demanding Sibelius concerto thickly in his blood. He projected authoritative purpose, yet ease, as he made his Giovanni Tononi violin (c.1700, on loan from Florian Leonhard Fine Violins) talk to the crowd – in scenario, actually to the enthralled Scandinavian king’s court, yet this surely is Yeo in reality.

He tethered then magnetised the ear with its (his) musical voice – its glow and burn, its landscape painting and texture weaving, its anger and tenderness, its wonders of harmonics, its deep concentration and its determined dancing. Thickset waist upwards, Yeo visually evoked in me a cross between pianist Murray Perahia and Naples footballer Maradona, revelling in exhibiting their sublimely devastating skills.

I do wish conveyors of gift flower baskets or booze bottles in a bag, to WPO or WSO female or male concerto soloists, could wait a bit longer. Their current timing deprives the artiste of a third curtain call and intrudes on their foremost deserved reward of communion with their audience. Yeo was yet another victim, the sustained audience appreciation for his completed performance curtailed. I know a solution.

John Clayton narrated WPO’s Christmas concert with Worthing Choral Society and Sompting Village Primary School Choir. His Nordic Adventures job, with its stylised, rhyming script, requires him to sustain the sense of heroism but risks sounding one-dimensionally proclaiming and declamatory. This isn’t Listen With Mother, but there seemed one or two glimpses of hero’s human side underplayed. Does it also need a more emphasised storytelling feel in places? It’s a new work in progress.

The WPO played out of their skins all afternoon, again excelling in the quiet as well as loud, and thrilling at their own renewing energy from feeling the music strung end to end for the first time and taking its effect – following the inevitable bits-and-pieces of rehearsal. They splendidly reserved stamina for the crowning conclusion, in which Lemminkäinen’s Return arguably out-Wagners the Siegfried Rhine Journey of The Ring.

This flourishing orchestra, now 75 years in action, are the organic training-child of Grier. His own schooling has been not only the opera and ballet of Covent Garden’s own Royal Opera House, but his own childhood. At primary school he formed his own drama group. He also sang, grew a Shakespearean love from his Liverpudlian father, ditched violin, took up cello then trumpet and piano (his mum first taught him) . . . but he then had to decide: a stage career, yes, but which? Acting in the theatre or playing in concert hall? Decision made, he then met his Danish saxophonist and percussionist wife.

Last year, after nine years with WPO, he moved residence from London to Worthing as his new practical base for his international commitments as well as local. Now the dramatist in him has spawned Nordic Adventures, in April he is bringing fully-staged opera for the first time at the Assembly Hall I can remember, and there is a first project afoot between Grier, the WSO and Worthing’s own professional Shakespeare company and expert director, Rainbow Theatre and Nick Young.

Perpetuating the palpable artistic growth of Worthing’s musical stature, in March the town’s own International Interview Concerts return with a 20th edition of their enlarged recital concept, an innovation in which audience also meet and interact with the performing artistes in their interviewing conversations, and also ask their own questions and take part in additional features.

And later next month, Worthing Symphony Orchestra – who began this Worthing instrumental classical music mushrooming with their four Sussex International Piano Competitions through the 2010s, which themselves inspired the Interview Concerts in 2012 – continue their own gradual embracing of the new world-wider musical palate with an Accordion Concerto from Ukraine, a British Triple Concerto using Venezuelan dance and liturgical chant, and an already signature Argentine Tango.

Richard Amey

At Nordic Adventures, the well-nigh essential accompanying programme booklets sold out. At the interval, someone ‘lifted’ mine, It containing my vital notes, but another audience member sacrificially gave me theirs. I later recovered my own and would very much like that lender, a Brighton violin teacher, to contact me so I can now return theirs! Please email Phil Hewitt at [email protected]

Next Concerts

Tickets from wtm.uk unless stated

Sunday 3 March, Worthing Symphony Orchestra ‘Kosmos Ensemble’– 2.45pm Assembly Hall – John Gibbons conductor; Harriet Mackenzie violin, Meg-Rosaleen Hamilton violas, Miloš Milivojević accordion.

Hubert Parry, Lady Radnor’s Suite; William Walton, Touch Her Soft Lips (Henry V); Igor Shamo, Accordion Concerto; Grace Williams, Sea Sketches; Errolyn Warren, Triple Concerto (Kosmos Ensemble); Piazzolla, Libertango.

Sunday 17 March, Kamila Bydlowska violin, Olga Paliy piano ‘by the violin bewitched’ – International interview Concert – 3pm at @artsspaces@sionschool, Gratwicke Road, Worthing BN11 4BL.

Full performance and interviewing conversations, with Guest Interviewer and Ask A Question. Performance includes Brahms, Scherzo from FAE Sonata; Saint-Saens, Sonata No 1 for Violin & Piano; a surprise piece; a selection of Movie Music; Frolov, Concert Fantasy on Themes and Songs from Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess.

Book at seetickets.com or buy at the door

Saturday 23 March, Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra with Worthing Choral Society and The Boundstone Chorus, ‘The WPO at 75’ – 7.30pm Assembly Hall – Preston Yeo leader, Dominic Grier conductor, Alissa Firsova (WPO president) piano.

Weber, Der Freischutz Overture; Beethoven, Emperor Piano Concerto; Firsova (the same), To Spring. Walton, Belshazzar’s Feast.

Saturday 20 April, Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra with The Merry Opera Company – 7.30pm Assembly Hall – Dominic Grier music director, John Ramster stage director.

Mozart opera, The Magic Flute, fully staged.

Sunday 21 April, Worthing Symphony Orchestra, ‘Beethoven FIVE’ – 2.45pm Assembly Hall –John Gibbons conductor, The Dave Lee Horn Quartet

Mozart, Magic Flute Overture; Warlock, Capriol Suite; Schumann, Konzertstücke for 4 Horns and Orchestra; Roussel, Sinfonietta Op52; Beethoven, 5th Symphony.