Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra will be offering Symphonic Dances (Rachmaninov, Strauss and Fitkin) when they take to the stage at Worthing’s Assembly Hall on Sunday, March 23 at 3pm.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. One of the
00:06great pleasures of the job is to speak to Dominic Greer, who's marking just over ten
00:10years now with Worthing Philharmonic Orchestra, ten years during which you've tried to broaden
00:16outlooks and you're certainly doing that in the next few weeks, aren't you? With a number
00:20of concerts coming up, a really lovely sounding programme on March the 23rd. Let's start with
00:27that. You're offering Symphonic Dances. Tell me about the programme.
00:32Well at its centre is Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, one of the great orchestral showpieces
00:37of the 20th century, which has dances ranging from a sort of earthy feeling in the first
00:43movement to a waltz-like second movement and a sort of infernal dance feel really in the
00:48final movement, quoting the Dies Irae, the famous Day of Judgment theme. And we've paired
00:52that with Strauss's suite from his most famous opera Der Rosenkavalier, which again contains
00:57at its heart a series of waltzes. But these are big, swirling, Viennese, almost fin-de-siecle
01:04waltzes, overblown, too much whipped cream, very, very exciting and absolutely lush orchestral
01:12writings that the player's really digging their teeth into that.
01:14And two pieces that are not often put together, you were saying.
01:18Not often put together, and especially not with the third piece on the programme, which
01:21is a recorder concerto that was only written in 2017, 20 minutes long, full of very, very
01:26exciting orchestral effects, not just conventional recorder playing, but breath noises and all
01:32sorts of other colouristic effects for six different types of recorder, amplified.
01:38It sounds fantastic. And then next up is an excursion, as you called it, but an excursion
01:43that should have happened five years ago.
01:45Yes, we're not going to go very far away from the Assembly Hall, just down the road
01:49to St George's Church in Worthing on Saturday, the 7th of April at 7pm.
01:55We're collaborating with the Brighton 16, which is a professional chamber choir based
01:59in Brighton, on Maurice Durufle's Requiem Mass.
02:04It's a contemplative programme of music involving that and an arrangement of Ravel's famous
02:10Pavane and a new piece by our composer-in-residence.
02:14So that's very exciting for us to be collaborating with them.
02:16I forgot to mention, I think it's Saturday the 5th, isn't it, not the 7th?
02:20Saturday the 5th.
02:21Saturday the 5th.
02:22And this is a collaboration with Brighton 16, and it's something that they proposed.
02:27What made it an appealing proposition to you?
02:31Well, we don't normally accompany a small group like this. If we have done choral pieces,
02:38they've tended to be huge choral orchestral monoliths, really, like Belshazzar's Feast,
02:43which we did for our recent 70th anniversary concert, and we collaborate with big choral societies.
02:48And so this was another proposition, and involves small forces.
02:52We're just using strings and harp and timpani plus organ to accompany the Durufle Requiem.
02:58It's a small chamber version.
03:01And all the other pieces are scored for that very intimate group of instruments as well.
03:05So we hope it'll be a different concert experience for people who choose to come.
03:09It sounds fantastic.
03:11And that is Saturday the 5th, St George's Church.
03:14Dominic, lovely to speak to you. Thank you.
03:16Nice to speak to you, Phil. Thank you very much.