THE ANNUAL Worthing Symphony Orchestra concert for Remembrance on Sunday has three pieces of music that need no introduction – nor scarcely any explanation as choices for the occasion.
Barber's Adagio For Strings is a prolonged grieving cry that came to global notice when played some decades ago at the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco. Walton's Spitfire Prelude and Fugue is an obvious tribute to the World War II ingenuity that e
nhanced the chances of victory of good over evil.
Both items (as had Princess Grace before her becoming royalty) found their way into films, the Walton in his score for The First of The Few, made during wartime in 1942, while the Barber includes Platoon, The Elephant Man and Amelie among its silver-screen credits.
And the third one, Rackhmaninov's Second Piano Concerto, carries a multi-weighted credibility with not only its intense and restless melancholy, borne of the composer's catastrophic period of depression, from which the triumph of its composition delivered him, but its subsequent famous utilisation. Parts of it are inextricably linked to, nay responsible for, the memorability of the film Brief Encounter — a masterly bitter-sweet wartime romance.
Remarkably giftedNew British talent Anthony Hewitt will be the soloist — described as "A remarkably gifted artist" by Gramophone magazine's Jeremy Nicholas.
Hewitt won the William Kapell International Piano Competition and his career already sweeps across recitals, chamber music to the full-scale concert platform. With an acclaimed recording of Liszt under his belt, his "formidable interpretative and technical ability" will be there to be judged in a concerto of universal familiarity and regard.
But what of the fourth work on WSO director John Gibbons' well-schemed programme? Far from unfamiliar to lovers of British music, Elgar's First Symphony is to many others the least-known of the selection. Not short enough to crop up as regularly on Classic Fm as the other pieces to be heard on Sunday, it will ultimately bear the task of carrying the atmosphere and feeling of the afternoon to its elevated conclusion.
A journeyLike all great symphonies, it is a journey. A slow transformation from one state of consciousness to another.
World War I wrecked the tidy, civilised Edwardian world Elgar not only knew and loved but to which he owed such contentment as his complex character would allow himself. Set in the unusual and special key (and therefore sound) of A flat, a region warm and mellow with sometimes dark nostalgic hues, the Symphony's main theme strides purposefully, strivingly, resolutely, sometimes almost questingly, all the way through from the work's opening to its arrival at destination.
Elgar felt it bore a vital element of hope and Gibbons remarks that "one of the most stirring endings in all orchestral music allows us to reflect that noble sacrifices are not in vain".
But there is other great Elgar in this, his maiden symphonic essay. If the outer movements remind us subliminally of the great tunes and marches that made his more popular name, the inner two take us inside the ultra sensitive soul he had. His music here is the stuff which turns mere Elgar admirers into deep Elgar lovers.
The last page of the slow movement, the clarinet Elgar's sure touch, is among the greatest lyrical and consolatory moments in all symphonic music.
Tickets from the Worthing Theatres box office: 01903 206206: Balcony £23, premium Stalls £20, stalls £15; students and under-16s anywhere, £5.
