Wow factor for Worthing Symphony Orchestra - review

Worthing Symphony Orchestra concert – ‘Best of British’ with Arta Arnicane (Latvia, piano), John Gibbons (Hampshire, conductor) at The Assembly Hall, Sunday, April 7 (2.45pm).

Sir Hubert Parry (Hants), Jerusalem (1916 version, no choir); Sir Edward Elgar (Worcs), Elegy for Strings Op58; Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (Dublin) edited Gibbons, Symphony No 6 in Eb major ‘In honour of the life-work if a great artist: George Frederick Watts’ Op94; Frederick Delius (Yorks), The Walk to The Paradise Garden; Elgar, Salut D’Amour Op12; Edvard Grieg (Bergen, Norway), Piano Concert in A minor Op16.

“W” is for Worthing, Worthing Symphony Orchestra, and the common exclamation ‘Wow’. They often go together. This concert was a vibrant double triumph. Both victories deserve equal billing. First, the one least expected – the first live performance of Stanford’s 6th Symphony for 100 years.

John Gibbons convinced Newcastle University to release the closely-guarded sole score and parts for he and five colleagues at Northampton Symphony Orchestra to prepare. He explained the music’s genesis, intentions and character to the audience from the rostrum, as is his self-popularised concert-giving method, drawing the listeners into the excitement of the occasion. Then the music made its own direct impact to the huge enjoyment of all present.

WSO timpanist Robert Millett told me how the orchestra’s sole rehearsal that morning of music previously unseen meant the performance was only their second play-through. But this is a London-peopled professional orchestra and such challenges are their speciality.

The music is an easy listening encounter, rhythmically and melodically open and transparent, with detail awaiting exploration on second hearing. It’s in late Romantic European style but here seems the work’s special advantage: it’s by a musical Irishman. Can you remember a winning Irish song in the Eurovision Song Contest’s heyday that everyone on the British mainland did not instantly grasp and enjoy?

Yet again, Gibbons stole a march on his Sussex orchestral rivals. He had heard on his car radio one of only two existing recordings and spotted a winner. Maybe, given financial investment from somewhere, he could record this his own edited version of Stanford Six with WSO and stand it alongside the yardstick 1981 one by Vernon Handley with the Ulster Orchestra.

The second triumph was jointly Gibbons’ unconventional placing of the Grieg Concerto last of the afternoon (not something that would happen in an opposing camp), and the soloist’s artistry and popularity.

The Concerto’s tuneful strength, schematic magic and its both spontaneous and accumulative power meant its elated audience took their elation home instead of into the interval to be diluted by afternoon tea. The audience soon showed relish for the performance with applause after the first movement’s emphatic close.

But added to this programming quiver came an artiste’s trump card. Recalled onstage a third time – rare at WSO concerts these days – the soloist gave them an encore. Not a reflective ‘calm down, now, everyone, here’s something exquisite’ encore to deflate all the billowing sails in the name of sensitivity and contrast. No, Arta Arnicane has a sharper brain and artistic entertainment vision than that.