The 4^th Sussex International Piano Competition, Semi-Finals (last 6) at Worthing Assembly Hall on Friday 11 May 2018 – Antonina Suhanova (Latvia): Mozart, Sonata K311; Prokofiev, Sonata No 8. Kenny Fu (UK): Beethoven, Sonata No 30 in E Op109; Rachmaninov, Sonata No 2. Alon Petrilin (Israel): Liszt, Ballade No 2; Haydn, Sonata in C Hob XVI:48; Barber, Sonata Op 26.

Sofya Bugayan (Russia): Brahms, Six Pieces Op118 (Nos 1-3); Prokofiev, Sonata No 8. Yi-Yang Chen (Taiwan): Haydn, Sonata in Bb Hob:41; Chen, In Memorium: Japan, March 11 (2011); Rachmaninov Sonata No 2; Chopin Mazurka Op17 No 4 in A. Rhythmie Wong (Hong Kong): Haydn, Sonata in Eb Hob XVI:52, Tchaikovsky, Dumka; Ravel, Ondine from Gaspard de la Nuit; Stravinsky, music from The Firebird, transcribed by Agosti.

The oldest finalist in the Sussex International Piano Competition, the first competitor at Worthing to include their own composition, and a glowing example of three of the four things the Jury seek. These factors are carried forward into tomorrow’s Grand Final at Worthing Assembly Hall (May 13, 2.45pm) by, respectively, Sofya Bugayan, Yi-Yang Chen and Rhythmie Wong of Russia, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

This competition is not ageist.  No limit on years is imposed. It balances a duty to provide opportunity for youth alongside celebrating wisdom and experience. Bugayan became the first SIPC finalist older than 30 when, at 36, she held off a formidable challenge from the second youngest of these final six pianists, Israeli Alon Petrilin, 23.

Visual news footage of the Japanese earthquake, Tsunami and nuclear power plant disaster compelled Yi-Yan Chen, a Juilliard pupil in New York, to write In Memorium: Japan, March 11 (2011). He played it on Friday, sometimes using several unorthodox piano sound devices, including key-struck hand-dampened strings, and glissando sweeps across open strings, in evoking Far Eastern musical sounds.

And with possibly one glissando too many in Agosti’s own arrangement take on Stravinsky’s piano version of his orchestral ballet score The Firebird, Cologne-based Rhythmie Wong swept into the final with more than enough technical ability, quality programming and artistic flair. In the latter two qualities, Chen ran her closest.

His de Falla (Fantasia Baetica) in the opening round already helped mark him out as a leading contender in all three counts, while Wong’s Ravel (La Valse), a similarly extrovert piece, had scored the highest possible marks with the particular audience member I actually misquoted previously.  Now corrected, I can report that ‘The best performance of the piece I have heard in 10 years’ should read “The best playing of ANY piano piece in that time”.

The fourth Jury requirement, ‘ability to connect with the audience’ in dry recital amounts to the sum of the previous three parts. But if Bugayan appeared outstripped by others in variety of programming, which from her amounted to a single work by Schumann (Humoresque) in the first round and selected late Brahms with Prokofiev in the second, she will probably have impressed in the Jury’s search criteria with the absorption, control and intensity of her playing.

Compared with (10 years her junior) Antonina Suhanova’s earlier performance in the day, Bugayan’s Prokofiev 8^th Sonata, a war work, seemed to come with softer, more human edges in the initial two mournful and troubled movements, and a iron grip on the bitter, violent, sometimes hysterical finale. Her deep affinity with Prokofiev dates back to childhood.

Petrilin, outstanding in the first half, set up a formidable fence for Bugayan to clear. The apparent dark horse, in a field headed by Chen and Wong’s variety of musical offering, Petrilin created an awe-inspiring atmosphere with Liszt’s Ballade No 2. Then, on the light-actioned, luxuriant Steinway he declined to celebrate Haydn by following the’ brittle sound brigade’ and instead let the instrument have its own unpedantic say on the composer.

Then Petrilin unleashed the startling half-crazed Barber Sonata, written to throw down the gauntlet to that era’s leading virtuoso, Vladimir Horowitz, with the express intention of ensuring him a string of sleepness nights ahead of its first performance.

Kenny Fu, only 20, shares London domestic accommodation with wonder-boy cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s violin-playing brother Braimah at The Royal Academy of Music. Kenny was in only his second open competition. He promised more than experience let him to deliver on the day but indicative of his talent is his Russian teacher Tatiana Sarkissova (wife of Dmitri Alexeev) setting him the high bar of Beethoven’s late Opus 109, and then the Rachmaninov 2^nd Sonata, in which he was eclipsed by Chen.

Yet if Fu’s tender years found him out in the Beethoven, the six-years-older Wong’s Haydn showed no shortcomings. From such a young player it displayed everything one might dare ask from a 40-something steeped in Haydn.

Wong’s playing bristled with character of many types. With the pauses of a well-practised humorist, she created anticipation before every paragraph. She kept you guessing if there would be a joke or not. She had you on the edge of your seat. Yet each pause seemed uncontrived, merely a natural break for breath, but still each successive one created more pregnancy.

And late in the finale – the requirement of any genuine Haydn player – more than just smile, she made me actually laugh. An act of supreme musicianship. She even created one astonishing toccata-like section in a blur of two alternating hands that would have ignited the Haydn’s ecstatic London audiences. A super Haydn player, not in the making, but already here.

One stage away from the Final round of chosen concertos tomorrow (Sunday, 2.45pm), this competition is far from over. Hoops and fences remain. Someone may fall at the last. Young pianists come to competitions short on concerto experience. The Worthing Symphony Orchestra and conductor John Gibbons, artistic director both the band and competition, await them with help.

Twice now, we have heard the final three – performing alone. Stalwart Jury member Yuki Negishi made the draw on stage for the playing order. Wong will go first in Chopin’s E minor Concerto, No 1.  In the first round, she played a Chopin Rondo. She seems unerringly to resurrect the spirit of each composer she plays. Doing that in Chopin No 2 was Varvara Tarasova in the previous Grand Final.

Second to go will be Bugayan – the new dark horse. The daughter of Armenian emigrants, a folk clarinettist and an accordionist on her father’s side, 10 years ago she became the youngest piano professor in Rostov-on-Don’s Rachmaninov Conservatory. She is in this final without using dazzlers in the standard solo show-off repertoire. “I wanted to travel, start playing in competitions again, and see the English Channel,” she says, disarmingly. But she brings a weapon of fire: Tchaikovsky’s 1^st Piano Concerto.

Yi-Yang Chen has been in the US for 12 years, now an assistant piano professor at East Tennessee State University, Johnson City. He has played 20 competitions in nine years. Will Beethoven’s 4^th Concerto take him to the £5,000 First Prize from the Bowerman Charitable Trust, plus the Champs Hill CD recording? Second prize is £2,000 and third, from Gisela Graham Ltd, is £3,000. The eliminated semi-finalists have received reward from the Worthing Symphony Society.

There can be no clean sweep repeat of Tarasova’s 2015 achievement. The British Music Prize from the William Alwyn Trust for the best interpretation and performance, from memory, of Alwyn’s The Devil’s Reel, has gone to a pianist who was ill on the day. A fact ironical – or instrumental? The winner: Bristolian, Daniel Evans (yes, British).

The Audience Prize, donated by Helena and Ti m Chick, is determined by votes from the audience at the final. Tickets from Worthing Theatres box office 01903 206206.

Richard Amey

The Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Sussex University, Falmer,

Sunday, April 29, 2018 

Quatuor Arod   

Jordan Victoria, Alexandre Vu (violins)

Tanguy Parisot (viola)

Samy Rachid (cello).

String Quartets by Haydn, in G minor Op74 No 3 ‘The Rider’ (1793); Benjamin Attahir, Al  ’Asr (2018); Beethoven, in E minor Op59 No2 ‘Rasumovsky’(1805).

Watching four different bodies combine on stage is one of the fascinations of seeing small-scale ensembles perform in chamber music concerts. We can’t know freely their actual personalities but we can search for clues in how they perform. Our eyes are drawn in all directions.

Here was another example in the frequent flow of Coffee Concert debut-making groups already operating at high level. This time, Quatuor Arod from Paris – intriguingly titled and individually answering to a metropolitan array of forenames and surnames yet again underlining the internationality of classical music ensemble formation down the ages.

We had another absorbed lead violinist, contained in his movement, concentrated in his delivery, articulation and expression, alert to his waiting virtuosic responsibilities. A second fiddle with wild spiky hair around an oriental face prone to smiling and excitement, and a variety of seating leg positions – and, like his No 1, buckled down to his task.

Quite different on his left, a violist seemingly at leisure when at times, as though relaxed and at peace with himself and the testing music, who would lean backwards in his chair, towards an almost carefreeness, lifting his instrument above the level of his music stand as though a drinks glass lifted for a waiter behind him to refill.

On his left, a wirier bespectacled cellist, earnest in movement and his looks towards his violist especially, and bodily a like spring recoiling and uncoiling. Here was the quartet engine’s piston and cylinder, in constant readiness and frequent thrust, propelling much of the music in very French-seeming urgency.

Although some looks deceive. Far from being the old hand at all of this, violist Tanguy Parisot is the new boy bedding in, barely more than a month in the quartet, with his cellist and often ‘rhythm section’ partner constantly at work cementing their intended  bond.

Lighting in the Attenborough Centre concert hall was more subdued than normal. Cellist Samy Rachid told me afterwards Quatuor Arad requested it as they want listeners listening rather than reading (their programmes) during the music. This was not an April ‘I love Paris in the Springtime’ programme they brought north. But a rigorous, demanding but energising trip across three historic time zones where each piece was a preparation for the next.

Their programme had the rustic homeward galloping finale of Haydn’s cuspal 17^th-18^th century creation, The Rider, preparing us like a trainer would, for the exacting visceral, rugged, intellectual and spiritual challenge of Benjamin Attahir’s quartet completed this very year. And that preparing a context and perspective for us, 213 years on, to view afresh Beethoven’s second Rasumovsky – the reward for which was a finale that performed almost the same compositional function as Haydn’s horseback hurtle, except without a saddle.

Quatuor Arod’s plan succeeded. Audience reaction to their often intensely-felt Haydn was boosted vocally by young audience members who got the point and gave back effusively to the players. The Attahir renewed our awareness of, and respect for, the undying expressive power of this instrumental medium, the string quartet. And the Beethoven arrived as an enthrallingly broad experience and a strong affirmation of the Attahir’s relevance and worthiness.

Written by a Toulousian in this his own 29th year, a composer, conductor, violin soloist and innovative ensemble founder who writes from East and from West, in old forms and in new, Al ‘Asr is surely a test piece of our personal expectations of chamber music. Attahir, trained at two conservatoires in Paris, the western political flashpoint capital of Europe as well one of its cultural melting pots, had given us something that requires a westerner’s urgent study.

For world understanding, we need to know about and understand each other’s religions and habitats. Ignoring them is not an option, ignorance is no excuse. Learning and respect is our sole salvation. Our Western concept of prayerfulness in a cool climate is hardly found in this music, which – says our superb programme notes – is in three unbroken movements, each guided by the poetic and allegorical aspects of the three most revered verses of the Qur’an’s 103^rd chapter.

Three verses of Muslim afternoon prayer. Their message is that without faith, good deeds, patience and truthfulness towards others, over time our lives incur internal loss. And that implies an impoverishment and downgrading of ourselves.

Very few of we in the audience will have been properly equipped to equate what we heard to what we were being told. And that must betray a musical as well as cultural insularity that has to be dangerous. This music should be required listening to help us close that gap. We have to understand why it does not match our expectations. At times it was electrifying, agitated, frantic, angry, with violin horsehair flying; and at times baffling, confusing and ungraspable. It ended suddenly, unexpectedly, as though without preparation, either climactic or with downscaling. No resolution was forthcoming.

This first hearing came at this bonus add-on 7^th concert to the season which came, thanks to founder Strings Attached support group member Tina Gee. And it formed a memorial dedication following a death in February this year that all Coffee Concert fans should note.

Caroline Brown dreamed up and founded (and rounded) the Coffee Concerts at The Old Market, Hove, where she was artistic director 1998 to 2010 before her long illness and the handing on of these concerts by she and husband Stephen Neiman. A cellist, both performing and as a Royal College examiner, to her lasting memory also is her foundation of The Hanover Band, who co-led the post-1970s European excavation and embracement of period instrument practice and performance.

Fittingy, this concert, with Mr Neiman present after a long absence, took place at a venue within the precincts of Sussex University, who gave Caroline her honorary doctorate. At a recent concert in a London City church, I read the epitaph above the ashes of Proms founder Sir Henry Wood.

“He (she) opened the door to a new world of sense and feeling to millions of his fellows. He (she) gave his life for music and he brought music to the people.”

If this Attahir quartet work, thanks to Quatuor Arod at this closing concert of 2107-18, leads some of us to greater cultural understanding and appreciation, then a new facet of Caroline Brown’s legacy will be underway.

Richard Amey

Next season’s concerts: October 21, Marmen Quartet; November 18, Jacquin Trio; December 9, Philip Higham (solo cello); January 27, Doric String Quartet; February 24, Castalian Quartet with Daniel Lebhardt (piano); March 24, Aquinas Trio.

St Mary in the Castle, Saturday 14 April 2018

Was this the largest audience for a Hastings Philharmonic event, even allowing for the Christmas concerts? It certainly felt like it and the ovation which greeted the end of the Tchaikovsky was whole-hearted and certainly deserved.

The first half was given over to Elgar’s Cello Concerto with Richard Lester an intense and moving soloist. Without excessive rubato or dwelling on the potential melancholy of some of the writing he created a narrative which was holistically pleasing. Yes there is a melancholy which comes close to depression in the opening movement, and the work often returns to the potential bleakness of life, but at the same time there is much that reflects the opposite mood. The final movement had a jaunty air to it, reflecting on Falstaff rather than Gerontius, so that the whole was uplifting and life-affirming rather than the sentimental wallow which can too easily slip into place.

As is often the case at St Mary’s, the soloist was almost uncomfortably close to the front row and there was a sense of intimacy throughout which larger venues simply cannot reproduce.

If the Elgar had eschewed the overtly emotional, Tchaikovskly’s Fifth Symphony had it in bucketfuls. After a slow sombre opening – and tempi throughout tended to be on the slow side – the brass let rip and it was obvious we were in for a thrilling ride. The long horn solo at the start of the reflective second movement was beautifully crafted by Anna Drysdale, and Marcio da Silva’s control of the opening dynamics made the brass intervention all the more dangerous. The third movement seemed almost out of place within this world of romantic sentiment and brash aggression, but gave way to a finely paced finale, which opened with near-Sibelius like mystery before we tumbled helter-skelter into the closing onslaught.

The young players who make up Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra are proving to be among the most exciting ensembles to be heard anywhere. For how long Marcio da Silva can keep them together before they are snapped up by other national and inter-national orchestras is anybody’s guess. For the moment let us be grateful we have them here and look forward to the Verdi Requiem at the White Rock on 5^th May – which deserves to sell out, so get your tickets quickly!