Kamila Bydlowska (Poland) violin

Varvara Tarasova (Russia) piano
St Paul’s Worthing on Easter Day

(1 April) at 4pm – doors 3.30pm)

(Simpler Easter joys after the intense season of Passions, Requiems, Masses and Oratorios)

‘The violin will take you’ is a musical foreign destination tour of Spanish rhythms and aromas; of exotic night music and tarantella dancing that’s half-Polish, half-Iberian, half-Middle Eastern; of authentic Argentine tangoing; of full-blown German Romanticism; and blues-jazz from America’s 1920s Deep South. Four continents . . .

In the above order it’s de Falla’s Andalusian Serenade, Szymanovski’s Nocturne And Tarantella, one of Piazzolla’s Tango Etudes, Robert Schumann’s tossed and torn First Violin Sonata, and Frolov’s showpiece Concert Fantasy on Themes from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Some is duo, some solo.

Plus the amusement, insight and extra surprises for which Worthing’s International Interview Concerts are already cherished. The interviewing both illuminates the music and the lives, minds and hearts of young musician role models such as these. Unexpected questions also spring from the audience.

Some surprises are musical. Varvara Tarasova in her 2016 solo piano appearance at these concerts, suddenly got up and sang an opera love aria as her second encore.  Other stimulating elements which enmesh audience and performers include the action close-up seating format In The Round and the cafe concert ambience.

Tarasova’s debut CD of Brahms and Schumann on Champs Hill, first admired by Gramophone, has now just been lauded in America by Fanfare who compares it equally to the work of seasoned recording artistes. This is rare, by serious reviewers.

Bydlowska comes from the Nigel Kennedy school of versatility and wide personal musical horizons. She plays classical concertos and chamber music, contemporary acoustic-electronic, jazz, and has a Tango band, La Tango Terra Quartetto. Combined, Bydlowska and Tarasova have an armoury to excite. Formerly at the Royal College of Music, now London-based, both are already international artistes playing on several other continents.

Tarasova reveals: “These Interview Concerts are a wonderful opportunity to communicate to the public, not only though music but friendly conversation. I performed solo in 2016 and was in the audience for the last one, in November. I’d never been to that type of concert with such a relaxing informal atmosphere. I wished for it to last longer. It was extraordinary.”

See the St Paul’s Worthing website blog:

https://stpaulsworthing.co.uk/blog/event/the-international-interview-concerts/

Tickets include concession for adult & young people in tandem, and Under-19s for £1

All available from the venue in person or online at seetickets.com

Other links:

https://twitter.com/KamilaBydlowska?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

https://www.facebook.com/varvara.tarasova.piano  (including Fanfare review of her CD)

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/varvara-tarasova-schumann-brahms

The Brighton Phil’s season draws to a close on Sunday 25 March when Conductor Laureate Barry Wordsworth returns for a memorable concert full of brilliant music to celebrate his 70^th birthday with the orchestra and loyal Brighton Dome audience.

The concert opens with the Karelia Suite by Sibelius – written very early in his career as a commission it is based on folk tunes from South East Finland, and Sibelius noted that he wanted it to sound like folk music. It has become one of his most popular works and includes the exhilarating ‘Alla Marcia’.

The virtuosic piano duo Stephen Worbey & Kevin Farrell join the orchestra to perform Malcolm Arnold’s Piano Concerto Op.104 – on this occasion for four hands on one piano. It was a BBC Proms commission for the three-handed piano duo Cyril Smith and Phyllis Sellick (Steven Worbey’s teacher) and was first performed by them with huge success at the Proms in 1969. The concerto is typically Arnold at his very best, from dark and tragic in the first movement, through a melting romantic melody in the slow movement, to a glorious Rumba in the last movement, full of wit and unashamedly popular.

For this concert Barry Wordsworth wanted to include ballet music, which has been such a great part of his conducting life, and he has compiled a short suite from Delibes’ comic ballet Coppélia. The orchestra will play Prelude, Valse and Czardas – these are brilliantly orchestrated and based on dance tunes Delibes found in his native northern France.

Finally Worbey & Farrell rejoin the orchestra to perform Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, a hugely entertaining composition that conjures up a musical parade of creatures using instrumental groups and orchestral soloists, as well as four hands on one piano, with imagination and insight. In this performance the narration will be brought up to date with modern-day cultural references by Worbey & Farrell. As Barry Wordsworth writes in the programme for this concert: “I cannot wait to perform for you all with Steven Worbey and Kevin Farrell. This will be fun, and will provide an excuse for celebration at the end of another wonderful season.”

Tickets from £12-£38 (50% discount for students/Under 18s) are available from Brighton Dome Ticket Office in Church Street, (01273) 709709 and online: www.brightondome.org

Discounted parking for Brighton Phil concert attendees can be found in NCP Church Street, a couple of minutes’ walk from the Dome, costing just £6 between 1pm & 6pm.

On the morning of this, the final concert of the season, the orchestra will be holding its annual free Open Rehearsal for Children in Brighton Dome Concert Hall, 10.15-11am – an exciting introduction to classical music and the instruments of the orchestra using extracts from Carnival of the Animals and Coppélia. As part of the orchestra’s Education Programme interactive workshops are being held in local schools this term and the Open Rehearsal is the culmination of the work done there.Places for the rehearsal are free but must be booked in advance via Brighton Dome Ticket Office.

STOP PRESS: The Brighton Phil is deeply saddened to have learned of the recent death of D V Newbold, CBE, a long-standing and passionate supporter and generous sponsor of the orchestra, who has sponsored this concert, which we will be dedicating to his memory.

Regular guest conductor Stephen Bell joins the Brighton Phil for their penultimate Sunday afternoon concert of the season at Brighton Dome and introduces the programme:

“Hugely powerful Russian emotions in our next concert ranging from an overture by the grand old man of Russian Romantics to one of the first examples of programme music with the brilliantly orchestrated Night on a Bare Mountain. The ever popular Fourth Symphony by Tchaikovsky is a vivid journey in itself, from the tense opening motif from the horns and bassoons, right through to the unbridled joy of the F major final pages.

In between, we’re joined by my long-time Hallé colleague and London Brass member, the award winning trumpeter Gareth Small, for a performance of the Arutunian Trumpet Concerto – a perfect vehicle to show off the technical and lyrical qualities of the instrument in a work that seems to draw on many strands of Russian influences and is a perfectly crafted and brilliant showpiece.”

Gareth Small, Principal Trumpet of the Hallé Orchestra, wants to reassure those unfamiliar with Armenian composer Alexander Arutunian’s show-stopping Trumpet Concerto (written in 1950) that they are in for a treat:

“I’m delighted to be back in Brighton Dome to play the Arutunian Trumpet Concerto. Don’t be put off if you haven’t heard of the composer. This magnificent piece is fizzing with interesting harmonies, timbres, melodies and textures, for orchestra and soloist which all come together to create this absolutely brilliant trumpet concerto. It is certainly one of my favourites as it highlights and accentuates the best parts of trumpet playing – range, stamina, technical prowess and tone. I hope you enjoy this piece as much as I do!”

The programme also includes Glinka’s characteristically Russian sounding overture from A Life for the Tsar which displays the heroic nobility suggested by the opera’s story of a young Russian peasant who saves the Tsar from a group of Polish kidnappers. More familiar to many will be Mussorgsky’s demonic tone poem Night on a Bare Mountain which depicts a witches’ Sabbath in music of quite terrifying power and energy (and was used in the penultimate scene of Walt Disney’s Fantasia).

Tickets from £12-£38 (50% discount for students/Under 18s) are available from Brighton Dome Ticket Office in Church Street, (01273) 709709 and online: www.brightondome.org

The Brighton Phil’s season finale will take place on Sunday 25 March when Conductor Laureate Barry Wordsworth returns to celebrate his 70^th birthday with the orchestra, joined by virtuosic piano duo Worbey & Farrell who will perform Carnival of the Animals. That morning sees the popular FREE Open Rehearsal for Children (10.15-11am) for which places can be booked via Brighton Dome Ticket Office.

On Sunday 11 February the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra will be performing a concert of unashamedly romantic music to get everyone in the mood for Valentine’s Day, and we are delighted to welcome Howard Shelley back to Brighton as both conductor and pianist. (Regular audience members will recall that on his last visit to the Dome with the Brighton Phil two years ago, performing Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No.2, he created quite a stir by directing the orchestra from the piano using a digital score on an iPad with a Bluetooth foot pedal.)
This time he opens proceedings with Schubert’s enchanting “Unfinished” Symphony No.8. Schubert started composing it in 1822 but put it aside to concentrate on other works, leaving it unfinished at his death six years later. We are left with two remarkable movements that herald the dawn of the Romantic symphony.
Mendelssohn wrote his First Piano Concerto aged just 21 on a trip to Italy (at the same time as composing his “Italian” Symphony) and its urgent, irrepressible opening seethes with the dynamism of impetuous youth. Franz Liszt famously played it at sight in a piano showroom, before going on to perform it many times in public to great acclaim. One of the great vehicles for the piano virtuoso, it is the perfect showcase for the dazzling technique that has made Howard Shelley one of the country’s truly great artists.

Our concert ends with Dvo?ák’s Symphony No.6 – full of rich melodies, lively rhythms and vivid orchestral colour, incorporating the folk music of his native Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) within a classical Romantic form. Premiered in 1881, this lush and confident work contributed greatly towards establishing him as one of the foremost composers of his generation, and provides a fitting conclusion for a programme that charts the evolution of the Romantic symphony.

Tickets (from £12-£38) are available from Brighton Dome Ticket Office in Church Road, in person, by telephone (01273) 709709, or online at: www.brightondome.org

50% discount for students and under 18s.

Discounted parking for BPO concert ticket-holders (just £6 between 1 & 6pm) is available at NCP Church Street Car Park.

What better way is there to spend a chilly winter’s afternoon than by attending one of the Brighton Phil’s enjoyable Sunday afternoon concerts at Brighton Dome and being entertained and moved by wonderful music played by some very talented professional musicians. We are now half way through our current season (which runs from October to March) and thanks to a generous grant from the John Carewe Brighton Orchestra Trust, we are already planning our next season.

Over the next four concerts the orchestra will whisk Dome audiences away on a musical journey around the world and back and forth through the centuries with glorious music by the likes of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Dvorák, Tchaikovsky, Glinka, Mussorgsky, Sibelius, Malcolm Arnold, Delibes and Saint-Saëns as well as less well-known composers such as Alexander Arutunian, an Armenian whose fabulous Trumpet Concerto (which we perform on 4 March) is a real show-stopper.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Our first concert of the New Year takes place on Sunday 28 January when we are joined by Michael Collins, one of the foremost clarinettists of his generation, as both conductor and soloist. Those of you with long memories may recall he won the woodwind prize in the very first Young Musician of the Year in 1978 at the tender age of 16.

The concert opens with one of Haydn’s London Symphonies, Symphony No.102, one of twelve symphonies written in 1794 on a visit to England. Rarely performed, it opens with stately grace and progresses to joyous vigour, and is regarded as one of his finest symphonies in both scope and scale.
Michael Collins is both soloist and conductor in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, a work of exquisite beauty that has become one of the most popular pieces in the repertoire. Completed just two months before Mozart’s death for his friend, the clarinettist Anton Stadler, its tender slow movement has featured in the soundtracks of films such as The King’s Speech and Out of Africa and often appears in the top 10 of Classic FM’s Hall of Fame.
Beethoven’s elegant and expansive Symphony No.1 which completes this concert is clearly influenced by the composer’s teachers, Haydn and Mozart. First performed in 1800 (in a concert he arranged himself) it impressed the Viennese public with Beethoven’s incredible talent. The form of the symphony pays homage to his teachers whilst at the same time pushing the boundaries of symphonic composition.

Tickets (from £12-£38) are available from Brighton Dome Ticket Office in Church Road, in person, by telephone (01273) 709709, or online at: www.brightondome.org

50% discount for students and under 18s.