Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, 20 February 2019

The now well-established partnership between the Philharmonia and the Marlowe Theatre continues to bring out the best in both. On this occasion the orchestra was in pleasing form and the auditorium full of enthusiastic concert goers – and it always surprises me just how well the Marlowe works accoustically: a rare thing for a multii-purpose performance space.

We began with Bach’s third Orchestral Suite – not a common choice for the overture slot and therefore good to hear.  Some of the openings were ragged (possibly because Philippe Herreweghe’s understated, baton-free conducting style was initially less than incisive) but the sound soon settled. They played the famous second movement with lots of appropriate sustained piano in the upper strings and well controlled underpinning accompaniment in the lower.

Bertrand Chamayou trotted out Mozart’s piano concerto no 23 in A (K488) with assurance although it was a bit odd to see him peering into the music he’d laid flat on top of the strings of the fully open grand he was playing as if he were at a rehearsal. His tender account of the lyrical middle movement was attractive and he played the finale with lots of French insouciance. Lovely work from the bassoons in the allegro assai too.

And so, in a concert, with the rather contrived title Gods and Mortals to the glories of the Jupiter symphony, in which the single flautist did a magnificent job and the whole focus was suddenly much sharper. The orchestra found real warmth of tone in the first movement and give us very clear finale in which the busy string work was delivered with  admirable precision.

Herrewghe had configured the orchestra for this concert with second violins to his right and cellos and violas in front of him half left and half right. As this arrangement usually does, it made the string sound seem more coherent and it was good to be reminded  how well both Bach and Mozart balance their string writing.

Susan Elkin

Kings’s Head Theatre, 13 February 2019

This is Bizet’s Carmen as you’ve never seen it before. Reworked for 2019 Britain, it opens in an NHS hospital. And it’s a bijoux version simply pared down to a 90 minute three hander love (or something) triangle. Musically, under the charismatic direction of Juliane Gallant from piano, it’s spikily strong and the new translation by Mary Franklin, who also directs, and Ashley Pearson is very funny.

What an inspired idea to have mobile phones playing Carmen tunes and blending them in. At one point the radio is playing in a bar and the presenter is announcing and playing extracts from Carmen. Dan D’Souza, a deliciously gravelly baritone as Escamillio, becomes a posturing football star (“Can I get a cup of coffee, ‘cause I’m not really fit to drive my maserati”) who sings the Toreador song badly in a karaoke bar as a way of showing off to Carmen.  When Carmen is singing the Habenera, Jose bounces a rubber ball in perfect rhythm to provide a gentle percussive underpinning. The whole piece is a light, witty enjoyable concept and full of imaginative ideas until, of course, the last five minutes because, as well all know, it can’t end happily.

Ellie Edmonds (alternating at other performances with Jane Monari as Carmen) has a rich warm singing voice which she uses crisply. She sails adeptly through all the big numbers and acts convincingly which is especially important in the intimate space of the King’s Head. The absurd hip-hop dance she does to Bizet’s music at the beginning of Act II is a moment to treasure too.

Roger Patterson sang Jose on press night – the role is shared with Mike Bradley – and brings a great deal of appropriate tenor angst and passion to it. He is compelling, first as a disillusioned NHS nurse coming to the end of his shift, then as a young man in love, changed after three months in prison and eventually as a thwarted, angry man.

This is a feminist take on Carmen. Written and directed by an all-female team it presents Carmen not as a femme fatale but rather as unfortunate, very plausible, young woman who makes a few fatally bad choices. I rather like that angle.

Susan Elkin

CHILDREN from 10 primary schools and other being taught at home were hit for six in The Assembly Hall last week. Totalling nearly 800 including their teachers, they were bowled over by Worthing Symphony Orchestra and conductor John Gibbons.

Free of charge as usual, the 40-piece orchestra invited them for this fourth such new concert in the three years they have been established. The object? As composer Edward Elgar would have put it: to “knock ‘em flat” with their first experience of the sound of a live professional symphony orchestra.

And Elgar helped them, with three of his Enigma Variations about his friends – one a woman, Ysobel, whom Elgar was teaching to play the viola. Another about a blustering heavy-handed man he was teaching to play the piano. The other about an organist’s bulldog, Dan, jumping into the river to retrieve a stick and shaking himself dry on bank afterwards and barking in triumph.

The children, organised by music teaching and instruments hub, West Sussex Music, were welcomed into WSO’s huge den by Rosie Secker, who got the hundreds singing together. Then the orchestra, in formal evening dress, took the stage, and sprang straight out of trap, tambourine rattling, with the Cossack Dance from Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker.

Gibbons, now 21 years the WSO artistic director and conductor, introduced the music. He smuggled a tuba and three sliding trombones into his own jokey arrangement of the famous movement of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony. William Alwyn got the WSO Scottish Dancing, then Dvorak took the children onto the night time of his New World.

The Suffolk Morris dancers of Doreen Carwithen got them going again. Sussex composer Paul Lewis suddenly had them trembling to his Abject Terror sequence from Spongebob Squarepants. Then Gibbons trained them to clap soft then loud to Strauss’s Radetsky March.

If there had been room to dance, a Highland Festival –cum-celidh-cum-military parade would surely have broken out among the children and teachers. But the dance floor lay beneath the seating so instead everyone sat, many children absorbed or transfixed, others semi- disbelieving, others jubilant and revelling at the fun and wonder of their experience.

All led up to a seriously exciting finish in which the WSO – the children now ready for anything – blazed, crashed and eventually strutted out the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony.

John Gibbons said: “It was thrilling to see a sea of enthusiastic young faces at the WSO Schools Concert on Thursday morning.

“It always brings joy to me and the orchestra to watch their excited reactions to each piece that we play for them – from the power of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth, the subtle surprises in the Haydn and the beauty of the cor anglais in Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony.

“I was also pleased to meet a group of Home Educated children and their parents who had obviously got an enormous amount out of the concert.”

Cumbrian saxophonist Jess Gillam, a musical celebrity at 20, who has twice soloed with WSO, wrote to The Guardian this week. School music cuts, she warns, threaten fundamental life-giving creativity, understanding and enjoyment.

These occasional WSO concerts – this one the first for a year – constitute an educational oasis for so many school children. And what about the other thousands for whom there is no room in the hall?

Richard Amey