London Philharmonic Orchestra celebrate 60 years in Eastbourne

LPO CEO David Burke said: “We have a lovely audience in Eastbourne and after the pandemic they were right back to full strength. They are either very resilient or they care very deeply about the LPO… or probably both!”

The Eastbourne celebration comes hot on the heels of the orchestra’s 90th birthday: “We had that last October and it was fantastic. It was a really good celebration. I think it is so easy just to focus on the day to day when you are working hard and then when you have an anniversary, it is a really good opportunity to step back and celebrate.”

As for Eastbourne: “I think we first visited the town in the 1930s. It was successful and they decided to formalise it into a residency which is what happened. I just think it's really good to get to know the community. With the residency you get a much deeper relationship. In Eastbourne we have people who have been coming to our concerts for many, many years. They know the players. They recognise the people on the stage.”

For the LPO it has all been part of getting back to normal post-Covid: “Our advances for next season are definitely back to where we want them to be. But as soon as we could during the pandemic we started performing digitally and we found ways to reach people and then when we came out of it all it was just like the whole audience was reminding us what we have missed so much. And then coming back down to Eastbourne and to have a full house and to be amongst old friends was just lovely.

“We have a residency in London and we've got two south coast residencies at Brighton and Eastbourne. In the summer we are resident orchestra at Glyndebourne and about eight or nine years ago we started a residency at a new hall in Saffron Walden.

“But I think with Eastbourne we've got a really good understanding of what Eastbourne audiences tend to like, and we know that they're very supportive of new artists. We will bring down some artists away from the London spotlight and we know that they will get a very good reception in Eastbourne. For our second concert of the season we are bringing down (one of the inaugural LPO fellow conductors) Charlotte Politi, and we know that she is really going to fly. She is a real star in the making right now.”

The fellow conductors scheme exists to promote diversity and inclusivity in the classical music industry by developing two outstanding early-career conductors from backgrounds currently under-represented in the profession. Charlotte leads the Orchestra in Weber’s Overture to Der Freischütz, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with soloist Samson Tsoy and Brahms’s Symphony No 3 (October 22).

The LPO’s principal clarinet Benjamin Mellefont is the soloist in the next concert, in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, the central work in a concert bookended by Beethoven’s Overture to Fidelio and Beethoven’s Symphony No 4, conducted by Bertie Baigent (November 26). Edward Elgar found inspiration for his Cello Concerto in the Sussex Downs, here performed by winner of the 2012 BBC Young Musician competition Laura van der Heijden. Conductor Gabriella Teychenné opens her concert with Smetana’s Overture to his opera The Bartered Bride and closes with Dvořák’s No 7 (January 14).