The Dome, Brighton, 8 March 2014

An English Idyll was the selling point for this concert which began and ended with Elgar. His second Wand of Youth Suite opened the evening and its gentle melodies proved highly effective, particularly the slowly evolving line at the heart of The Little Bells. The Russian influence both musically and emotionally was evident in The Tame Bear, which led to an enthusiastic,  but well-structured, finale with the Wild Bears.

In Delius’ The Walk to the Paradise Garden, David Hill brought out the Wagnerian rather than the Debussyan influences, making the whole seem heavier and more sombre in its unfolding than is often the case. Perhaps it was in contrast to the heady lightness of Tasmin Little’s playing of The Lark Ascending. This is not only Vaughan Williams’ most popular work but one of the all-time favourites, regularly at the top of the charts. That it has a potentially serious side too often goes unnoticed. Though drafted in 1914, before the massacres of the war, it seems to reflect the silence and emptiness of the countryside, the folk tunes a ghosted memory of the men who worked the land. It was both moving and lyrical as it spun its way ever upward.

After the interval David Hill brought us a strangely disparate view of Elgar’s first symphony. The first two movements were brash, fast and often over loud. There was very little sense of rubato in the approach and no portamento in the string sections. As such it was over-modern and aggressive. However the Adagio found a much better sense of style and balance, with the tempo not only relaxed but having a far finer sense of flow. This moved into the final movement which at last felt like Elgar and the nobility of the work was allowed to blossom.

The individual items were introduced by Petroc Trelawny. As the concert was not being broadcast one has to ask why? It added nothing to our experience of the music and his inability to get simple facts correct was irritating.

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra return to the Dome next year.

The Dome, Brighton, 2 March 2014

Barry Wordsworth was dressed to kill this afternoon, and his programme served to reinforce the sense of occasion, growing in strength as it progressed.

Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin was light and airy throughout with a real brightness in the final movement. The small orchestral forces seemed to add up to more than the players on stage. The same was true for Vivaldi’s A minor Bassoon concerto. An unprepossessing work, Andrea de Flammineis gave us a cultured and gently moving account of a work which seems very close to Venice. The opening movement has minor undertone which feels like a slightly unstable gondola. This gives way in the second movement to a quiet moonlit night out on the lagoon. Fanciful, of course, but the whole work has a gentle smile which soloists and orchestra brought off to perfection.

There is an innocence, almost a naivety, about Copland’s Appalachian Spring which is immensely appealing – a dream of what might have been but has now been lost. This was very well caught by Barry Wordsworth and the small orchestra, with some very effective solo playing, particularly Alistair Young at the piano.

The afternoon ended with Mozart’s Symphony No 29 in A. One of my earliest memories of concert going is hearing this symphony in the Maida Vale studios back in the early 1960s and it has remained a favourite ever since, though it is not as popular as it once was. The structure may be conventional but Mozart constantly stretches the boundaries, and there are passages that pre-figure Beethoven even at this early stage.

A brief word from Barry encouraged us all to support not only the final concert this season, on 30 March, but to endeavour to support in any way possible the next season which will include not only eight concerts at the Dome but also four concerts in Brighton Unitarian Church. More details to follow!

ENO, London Coliseum, 28 February 2014

ENO has a very strong track record where Handel is concerned and I suspect the new Richard Jones production of Rodelinda will join the ranks of challenging but convincing approaches.

We are in Milan in some amorphous present, but there is no sense at all of a country, its people or even its outside world. The characters we meet are almost entirely bound up with their own narcissistic problems; the CCTV is only used to spy on each other. When we do encounter the outside world, in some stunning designs from Jeremy Herbert, characters are alone. The huge memorial to Bertarido dwarfs the stage; the enormous neon-lit bar is empty but for the protagonist and his friend. There are few surprises as the narrative unfolds and relationships become ever tenser. They may sing of love and desire, but violence is ever present and the brilliant reversal of the final scene – all compassion in the language, but increasingly vicious in action – is fully justified by all we have seen before.

It is uniformly well sung, often brilliantly so, with Rebecca Evans’ Rodelinda moving towards Lady Macbeth in her single-minded search for vengeance, her husband, Bertarido, giving Iestyn Davies one of his finest characterisations, as a man moving from compassion to vengeance. John Mark Ainsley made Grimoaldo a more complex character than he appears from the libretto, at odds with the action he has led himself into and yet potential more honourable than Bertarido. Susan Bickley’s Eduige is a pragmatist who loses out in the end. In this world of nasty individuals only the fixer, Garibaldo, actually gets killed, but the one honest man, Christopher Ainslie’s finely crafted Unulfo, is not only butchered near to death by the ‘hero’ but is totally ignored in his pain as the victors grab the spoils. It is a challenging but convincing approach which I hope will be revived.

Christian Curnyn keeps a tight rein on his forces in the pit, who played with panache, but could surely have been raised for greater impact?

There are six more performances between now and 15 March.