Worthing Symphony Orchestra in concert - review

‘May Jubilations’ Concert, Worthing Symphony Orchestra at The Assembly Hall, Sunday 22 May 2022 (2.45pm), leader Julian Leaper, conductor & artistic director John Gibbons, with piano Dinara Klinton. Edward Elgar, Imperial March Op32; Sergei Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No 3 in Dm; Antonin Dvorak, Symphony No 8 on G Op88.

SOMEONE distinctively added to the diversification of Worthing’s audience at the town’s professional orchestra’s season-closing concert. It was a Worthing Symphony Orchestra audience guest on her first public day’s work as the Borough Council’s first female, in fact its first muslim of either gender for 18 years.

Resplendent not in the formal attire of her office but sensational in a long, peach-rose coloured Bangladeshi dress, alongside her consort, husband Millad, Councillor Henna Chowdhury had welcome news for Worthing’s classical music world: “I love the piano, it’s always just amazing, and I feel I have a real affinity with music.”

The first classical concert she has ever attended became her first mayoral duty: “I really enjoyed it – and so did my husband. The piano appears a lot in Asian music and I just love the sound. I love to sing, even though I’m only a bathroom singer! I’m the only one in a very traditional Bangladeshi family who is musical and I feel like music is in my blood.”

She was schooled in Worthing at Thomas a Becket Middle and Davison High since arriving in the UK with her mother and the middle of three siblings at age 11, following the sudden early death of her father. She now works helping vulnerable people of ethnic minorities. Her three chosen local mayor’s charities include Superstar Arts, which helps disadvantaged young people and adults in creative projects.

As Henna she is, yes, named after the dark red cosmetic substance which, she informs me, even men wear although only on their wedding day, in designs on the palms of their hands. Expect to see her arriving sometimes in a sari or the traditional tunic-and-trousers costume alternative of the salawer kamiz. “For cultural events, I will be dressing to suit the occasion,” she tells me. She has begun true to her word and looks set to arrest not only the eyes but the hearts of Worthing’s community.

So what did Worthing Symphony Orchestra present to Henna Chowdhury and their second-largest audience of this courageous, Covid defying, debt-dicing season? Not everything on the programme!

The music for the famous William Tell Overture by Rossini were missing from the pile of parts ready to play: a misunderstanding between conductor John Gibbons and WSO librarian and bassist Eddie Hurcombe. A different Eddie – Elgar – stepped into the breach with his lively, original-sounding and Queen Victoria Jubilee-motivated Imperial March. This was originally intended to begin the second half but kicked off the first.

Gibbons could be allowed a degree of pride when he confessed from the rostrum that this was the first such cock-up (my words – it’s an orchestral occupational hazard) in his more than double decade of WSO tenure. He assured the audience they’d hear it instead when next season started. See the footnote.

Not programmed but beginning the second half was a reprise of Gibbons’ orchestral arrangement of the choral hymn-cum-anthem ‘A Prayer for Ukraine’ by that nation’s composer Mikola Lysenko. WSO first performed it on March 13, in response to the outbreak of the present hostilities.