Eastbourne Symphony Orchestra offers spring choral concert

Eastbourne Symphony Chorus and Eastbournian Society Chorus join them for Haydn’s Creation on Sunday, May 8 at 7.30pm at St Saviour’s Church.

The performance will also feature soprano Rachel Shouksmith; tenor Andrew Mackenzie-Wicks; and bass Christopher Dixon.

Conductor Graham Jones said: “This is an annual event. We’ve done it now for nearly 40 years during which time we have sung most of the major works in three different venues. We were at St Saviour’s and we went to the Congress Theatre and we also came over to Chichester and now we are back at St Saviour’s.

“Really it began because there was a feeling that this was something that the orchestra should do as part of its role in the community and there was also the feeling that we knew of singers that could come together to do it.

“It is important to remember that we are an orchestra and some of the singers come from different local groups. Eastbourne Symphony Chorus is something that comes together for this event. Many of the singers we see from year to year.”

Inevitably it is all quite a logistical challenge: “It is two different groups that are rehearsing alongside each other but not together. The two groups don’t come together until the day of the concert. Part of what is going on in rehearsal is about anticipating what the other group are thinking and thus aiming for a consistent performance on the day because there is precious little time when we do actually get together.

“We have a three-hour rehearsal and we are bringing together the choir and the orchestra and also the three soloists. Normally it clicks. Sometimes it takes a little longer than other times to click. Musicians have got to get to understand each other and understand the venue and from a conductor’s point of view, it’s important to remember that musicians themselves will be doing their best to adapt after that first baton comes down. Part of it is really just keeping things together. There is an awful lot of music to get through. This is pretty much a two-hour piece and we have got only three hours to rehearse on the day.”

Importantly the piece is fulfilling a pre-pandemic promise. This is the piece that they were going to do before the first lockdown descended.

“So this has been in cold storage for us somewhat. When we got together in March this year we were taking it up where we left off.”

Part of the challenge will be that choirs generally are a little bit down in number, an estimated 20-30 per cent down: “We are reckoning on there being just over 70 in the choir which is probably rather better than Haydn’s first performance. He had 120 musicians and 60 singers and that doesn’t sound very balanced! We will have about 50 in the orchestra.

“We wanted to get back to it partly because the singers had been working on it before the pandemic and also because it is a piece that has an incredible message for us today. First of all it’s arguably one of the greatest choral works ever written but also it is an optimistic work that lifts the spirit in these troubled times. I think that we tend to forget that Vienna in the late 1700s and particularly early 1800s was partly under threat of war and by the early 1800s it had been invaded twice in the process of the Napoleonic war. It was a work that was conceived and performed against this troubled background, and I do think it does relate to us today in some ways.”

wegottickets (£14); Reid and Dean, 43-45 Cornfield Road, Eastbourne BN21 4QG (£14; £12 for ESO Friends); on door (£15; £13 for ESO Friends). Information from concertmanager@eso.org.uk.

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