Kamila Bydlowska and Olga Paliy to perform in Worthing concert series

She has now got special musical history in the town and will return on Sunday March 17 at @rtssspaces@sionschool (3pm) for an International Interview Concert with Ukrainian pianist Olga Paliy in an already popular pairing.

The Polish violinist’s 2016 debut with the Worthing Symphony Orchestra included breaking a string during a Wieniawsky Concerto – a rare occurrence which brought that New Year concert to a temporary halt. At Easter 2017, in a presentation called ‘The violin will take you’, she captivated the Interview Concerts, not only with her irrepressible interviewing personality but by performing a piece while walking around the full-house audience.

Later that year she fronted the Interview Concerts’ move into taking their associated artistes into primary schools to perform and thrill. Then she turned up playing on the pebbles at East Beach Studios in an authentic Argentine tango duo during the 2019 Worthing Light Festival.

Now she is back with ‘by the violin bewitched’, her concert alongside Paliy – whose own Worthing track record of delighting audiences includes two Piano Concerto appearances with WSO (Brahms’ 2nd and Mendelssohn’s 1st), winning the Audience Prize in the 2013 Sussex International Piano Competition Final, and an Interview Concert when, in her encore, she sang to her own piano playing.

Paliy and Bydlowska have been a duo since 2021. Their Brighton debut audience reaction included this: “Their friendly chat created an instant personal connection with us. They had such affinity with the music it seemed to come with their individual personalities baked in. There was the constant feeling they were making the music catch fire in front of our eyes.”

The upcoming ‘bewitching’ will include drawing audience smiles with their infectious enthusiasm and combined stage presence in delivering and sharing a characteristic variety of virtuosic and lyrical music. Johannes Brahms’ driving FAE Sonata Scherzo will lead to the masterful and meaty 1st Violin Sonata of Camille Saint-Saens – written in the same year as his blistering Organ Symphony, and with a similarly surging finish. This classical first half then gives way to romance, dance and song in the second.

Lifted from the big screen will come Astor Piazzolla’s moody, atmospheric ‘I Return to the South’ tango from the movie Sur, and Italian genius Ennio Morricone’s aching Love Theme from Cinema Paradiso. The final climax will be jazz-classical violin maestro Igor Frolov’s scintillating Concert Fantasy on Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess, which draws on My Man’s Gone Now, I Got Plenty of Nuttin’, Summertime, Bess You Is My Woman Now, It Ain’t Necessarily So, and I Ain’t Got No Shame.

The Worthing-based International Interview Concerts deal in the unexpected. In between these scheduled pieces will arrive a secret surprise one, and more intrigue is promised during the audience’s own Ask A Question section. The ‘@rtsspaces’ venue is in Sion Senior School at the top of Gratwicke Road, Worthing BN11 4BL. Sips and nibbles are available and free parking on-site and on-street.

Further information about the artistes, public reaction, and the music here (see both Event and Discussion pages) and the ticketing (here) is child- and Under30-friendly.

Information from Richard Amey (International Interview Concerts co-producer)