REVIEW: Worthing Symphony Orchestra welcome 2024 Viennese style

Joseph Lanner, New Year’s Galop; Johann Strauss II, The Gypsy Baron Overture, Champagne Polka, Persian March; Josef Strauss, Water Colours Waltz; Johannes Brahms, Hungarian Dance No 1; Strauss II, Vienna Sweets Waltz, French Woodland Cuckoo Polka, Emperor Waltz.

Franz von Suppé, Isabella Overture; Josef Strauss, Anvil Polka; Johann Strauss, Radetsky March; Antonin Dvorak, Slavonic Dance No 2 in E minor Op72; Strauss II, Pizzicato Polka; Strauss, Chatterbox Polka; Strauss II, The Blue Danube Waltz, Thunder & Lightning Polka; Franz Lehar, Gold and Silver Waltz.

The hoisting of public spirits during the year’s darkest days of economic difficulty and daylight now sparks worldwide delight in New Year’s Concerts. Whether dripping in ballroom jewellery glamour, or parading modest new hats, scarves and gloves from Christmas, the reviving audience interest in the simple uplift from the Straussian Viennese dance bands of 19th century Imperial Austria is resuscitating a classical music custom. Pre-pandemic, it seemed destined at least for mothballs.

Orchestra organisations playing it conservatively safe in the 2000s and 2010s jeopardised its survival. The format was stagnant. Audience indifference was growing. But somehow the annual Vienna Musikverein New Year Concert, live TV on January 1 morning, combined with constant British Saturday night TV interest in Strictly Come Dancing has saved its day.

And smarter music programming presents a developmental opportunity WSO conductor John Gibbons has embraced. His current New Year Concerts increase audience awareness of its historical heritage and wider seasonal surroundings. There is plenty of illogically disregarded seasonal orchestral music (eg. Respighi, Delius, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov) alongside other central European dance music (Dvorak, Brahms, Schubert) to broaden the palate and brighten the therapeutic picture in face of the rationed winter sunlight.

And, without needing any fake body tan, it is helping to save WSO’s day. Sunday’s sold nearly 8% more tickets than last year, pulling 633 people out, despite being a week later. Gibbons was already sowing the seeds for 2025 success.

Always amusingly hosting Sunday’s party from the rostrum, he placed the music in context, indicating the fun to be had watching its performance, and chatted his audience through his probing of stacks of music from the period, some ludicrously overlooked in favour of trotting out the old favourites. Look at the concert set list above. Sprinkled and glittering among the rest are an Anvil, Paints, Confectionery, Bubbly, a Chatterbox and a Cuckoo.

Straitened times continue and the WSO this time managed with minimum staffing. Sufficing were only 32 players, with only 18 strings, Gibbons’ usual auxiliary bass trombone, and the percussion ‘kitchen’ slashed to two. But, timpanist and percussionist were turning their hands to everything – and anything – like children who’d today brought along all the gift toys from Uncle Drosselmeyer they’d opened or pinched from other kids at The Nutcracker’s Christmas Eve Party.

Timpanist Rob Millett had his usual kettledrums and Chris Blundell’s deputy Richard Horne sat appropriately at a dance-band drum kit. But they were also taking on two other percussionists’ roles. Both carried a triangle, a glockenspiel, and Millett also needed two cymbals. Watching under pressure the consummate dexterity of Millett, effectively a cat on hot bricks sometimes, was a concert-long wonder. Beaters needed instant selection and switching and his two glockenspiel sticks careful separating in an instant. In the space of one particular musical bar he could only switch from glock to timps one stick at a time.

Suddenly Millett was blowing a Cuckoo device (he told me it’s actually called a Cuckoo . . . ) . Horner warbled back with a mouthed nightingale device. Millett continued the conversation and Horner ended it blowing a long duck’s quack. Horner sounded a champagne bottle unpopping. Then clicked castanets for Isabella. Millett came firing through with a raucous Rackett – like a giant 1950s football crowd rattle. And damn me if this thing doesn’t then generate a pistol shot cracking through the orchestra.

Neither had the time to clank the Anvil. Instead, Gibbons enlisted second clarinettist, Harry Cameron Penny. But, obscured behind the second flautist, his instrument was invisible and few realised who the blacksmith was until he was called for a special bow, and able to brandish his hammer if not his heavy anvil.

Is all this classical music? The audience clapping its hands in unison, softly, then loudly, directed by Gibbons, in the Radetsky March . . . is this classical music, too? NO, says tradition – still. They can do it in one piece of music only. The audience happily participate. Even sobersides shed their snobs’ handcuffs. But that’s it, riff raff, that’s your lot! A special Arts Music Prize will greet the conductor who hunts out and dares to include at least one more March, and invites so the audience’s hands get warmer, and it furthers their uplift and goodwill.

Will the prize-winner be Gibbons? I have an ex-professional ballerina friend, Scottish, whose untameable urge to dance whenever she hears music means she can’t attend concerts unless there is a wide aisle to move in. For her, that counts out New Year Viennese events around Hogmanay. With her last week, I wondered how the many of the growing number of today’s ballroom dancing enthusiasts are just dying to waltz to the Strausses, but must curb their instincts.

Scottish lass and I mulled it over. Why not create an area at the WSO New Year’s Concert where competent and costumed ticket buyers dance during selected music? Something also to interest and enchant the audience on this special day? The Assembly Hall floor is authentic dance sprung-wood! Have it somewhere not obscuring the whole view of the orchestra? Would that not add more of the original Viennese flavour and create something new in the concert world? How much more audience would be attracted?

Each half of Sunday’s concert was kicked off with a Rossini-influenced overture. This time, though, Gibbons closed the afternoon not with anything firecracking but with something glowingly warm, smooth and contented – his own favourite waltz, The Gold and Silver. It completed a consecutive trio of some of the great waltzes that keep these people coming back. Gibbons said it was to close the day with the kind of thing British society needs at times like now. Also during proceedings, he remarked that attending live orchestral concerts was like going to a football match or an opera house. Recommendable because you can see everything going on that TV or car or home radio cannot show you. He also re-emphasised the imperative need for children to take part in music, playing or singing, automatically and integral to everyday education, increasing overall child academic attainment and insurance for the country’s own eventual wellbeing. The sound that followed was Gibbons’ audience breaking spontaneously into agreeing, but resigned, applause. It was not the baying ‘Hear! Hears!’ of an approving government.

Richard Amey

Concerts next (Tickets from WTM -01903 206206)

Worthing Symphony Orchestra, Sunday 4 February - 2.45pm Assembly Hall – ‘Jeneba Kanneh-Mason’, conductor John Gibbons.

Dvorak: Czech Suite; Mozart: 23rd Piano Concerto K488 (Jeneba Kanneh-Mason piano); Dina Appeldoorn: Pastorale; Mendelssohn: Italian Symphony.

Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra, Sunday 11 February – 3pm Assembly Hall – ‘Nordic Adventures’ – conductor Dominic Grier

Sibelius: Kullervo Introduction and Violin Concerto (Preston Yeo, violin), Lemminkainen’s Return. Nielsen: Saul & David Act II Prelude and Helios Overture. Grieg: Peer Gynt five exerpts and Wedding Day at Troldhaugen. Alfven: Swedish Rhapsody No 2 (Uppsala).

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

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

International interview Concert, Sunday 17 March – 3pm @artsspaces@sionschool, Gratwicke Road –– Kamila Bydlowska violin & Olga Paliy piano.

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

NB. Book at seetickets.com or buy at the door