Brighton Year-Round 2026

Sussex Musicians Club

Sussex Musicians Club

Genre: Live Music, Music

Venue: Chapel Royal, Brighton

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

Sussex Musicians welcomed a unique line-up. The ten strong and sixty-string Brighton Guitar Group conducted by Jon Rattenbury performed an art of familiar and fresh guitar repertoire.

Celsi Machado b.1953) is a name new to me. His Catarate Xote is a gentle apathetic in sarabande fashion. Paraguyan Augustine Barrios (1885-1944) is far more famous as a guitar composer. His waltz-like stroll of Madrigal Gavotte arranged by M Ingley – effectively amplified – is again one of his gentlest offerings.

Stanley Myers (1930-1993) is immortalized for his 1978 Cavatina here arranged by A Chambers. Again we’re treated to a delicate counterpoint with plenty of air and indeed smaller forces for most of it

Finally a full arrangement of a work never dreamed of for guitar by its compose. A case of kites perhaps. Peter Warlock (1894-1930) was open to new instrumental sonorities often through the lens of late Renaissance and early baroque British music. Though his 1922 Capriol Suite is in fact quarrying from French Renaissance pieces. Chris Susans has arranged four of the six movements – the fourth and fifth are too fiendish outside a chamber orchestra. Of course this arrangement takes us back to the source instrumentation, sounding inevitably even more period than the evocative strings Warlock scored for. A really valid arrangement then with bite.

The first Basse-Danse is taken at a gentler tempo than were used to. The Pavane is even more delicious with parts shared around with a spatial tang that’s beguiling. The Tordion is that unusual thing, a slow pizzicato performed at pianissimo. Finally the Mattachins. With its cross rhythms and crunchy dissonances I wondered how this would work out. It’s not flinched at. It’s just slower and every crunch observed. Yes quite andante throughout, due to the 10-guitar line-up, but quietly thrilling and a wholly musicianly experience.

Due to the short form with the AGM, there was room for just two more groupings. Both song recitals.

Mezzo Pamela Cross and pianist Zhanna Kemp gave a recital of five songs by five composers.

Brahms’ ‘Die Mainacht’ is one of those gnarly lyrical lieder of Brahms  – who wrote more song collections than any other genre –  where you feel a sort of peace has been made with erotic disquiet. Cross takes the mellow lyricism in autumnal colours. Reynaldo Hahn’s ‘A Chloris’ was written when Hahn was astonishingly around 15, in 1889. Taking like Gounod a Bach-like bass-line – Hahn’s is an imaginary rococo evocation – and allows the mezzo line to soar over it. It’s still his most beautiful song and one of the most distinctive chanson ever written Evoking Watteau if not Cytherea it’s a ravishing near fin-de-siecle evocation. Invocation almost.

Vaughan Williams’ ‘Silent Noon’ setting Dante Gabriel Rosetti is early (for him) from 1904. It’s still perhaps his best-known song too (perhaps some of the 1905 Songs of a Wayfarer are now becoming even better known); still with a late romantic gleam and a hint of the modal harmonies from the Tudor period he was to make his own in a few years. These mostly late romantic gleams are underpinned by a melodic sureness emerging individually from the Stanford RCM school. At 32 VW was still in his apprenticeship. But studying with Ravel four years later changed all that.

Gabriel Fauré apart from that sliver of masterpieces by Henri Duparc, is the greatest Chanson composer. ‘Apres un reve’ is so famous in its arrangement for cello and piano and for other forces, that if comes as a tender shock to hear it again as originally composed. Its long languorous line gliding up from Alpha rhythm doesn’t preclude a passionate but not explosive climax. Pure Fauré and the spirit of chanson.

A return to lieder and Brahms’ older friend Robert  Schumann. ‘Widmung’ is possibly Schumann’s most rapt outpouring of joy from his 1840 Year of Song and marriage to Clara Wieck. Someone whom Brahms was later to love. A paean to rapture and somehow capturing it, it makes a fitting end to a beautifully judged short recital. Kemp is the perfect idiomatic partner to Cross’s warm mezzo hug.

Finally Sue Mileham crafted a “Wings of Song” theme. Poets write of India who’ve never been there. Mileham has a lot of fun describing the idiocies of Biedermeier. Mileham’s wit is as ever as much in evidence as her singing.

Jane Plessner commanding a mellow but incisive clarinet and the distinguished Nicola Gruenberg at the piano make this particularly rewarding too.

Franz Lachner (1803-1890) outlasted his contemporaries and perhaps wrote music of the 1830s throughout his 87 years. ‘Auf Flugein des Gesanges’ is a dream song where the lovers watch, for padding past landscapes to sink into their dreams; sounding distinctly eroticized in a genteel way, as they do. The climax is decorous but unmistakable. With a short passage for solo unaccompanied voice before the coda.  Good to know. And a fine addition to this repertoire that includes Schubert as well as Louis Spohr.

Yorkshire born Arnold Cooke (1906-2005) lived even longer. Taught by Hindemith amongst others like the Second War casualty and contemporary Walter Leigh (1905-42), a Hindenithian fingerprint is traceable through nearly everything, though you just see it peeking through in his small output of songs: which oddly aren’t well known. That’s despite being attractive and on this evidence grateful to sing. I attended a Leeds concert of his Symphony No 4 with him in attendance in 1989, and find he’s still underrated.

Three Songs of Innocence of 1957 follow on from was own 1951 set. ,’The Piper’s naturally privileged the clarinetist but the blend of lyrics line and instruments are beguiling in all three soloists.

‘The Shepherd’ is a far less yodelling affair and seems a paean to him from a longing lover. Rather than say the Shepherd getting his rocks off about or on some girl. It’s a beguiling away as lines sashay gently into reverie. Perhaps a dream of Cooke’s.

Malcolm Arnold is inevitably invoked as the clarinet skirls to a piano ostinato rhythm and a touch of Hindemith in joke mode fire up ‘The Echoing Green’ and an eternal roundelay circles, a summer dance that exhausts. And the music too evocatively slows down too. This is a terrific trio of songs and really worth knowing. Mileham and her team should be congratulated for this discovery.

Shepherd and rock come running inevitably. Schubert’s 1827 ‘Der Hirt auf den Felsen’ or ‘The Shepherd in the Rocks’ is the most celebrated piece in this repertoire. Mileham has long built programmes round this and it makes a fitting conclusion to her recital and the programmes, as the three musicians negotiate not just lyrics but dramatic outbursts.

It’s keenly characterized too as the Shepherd sees the approach of spring and his ability to go wandering off to meet his distant beloved. Who one imagines lives in another distant rock with another flock of sheep. Mileham and team really warm to this with panache and characterful bite in the concluding paragraphs and coda.

A perfect spring festival. Of the AGM happily I do not have to speak! Others will minute that. Sussex Musicians always surprises with its repertoire and its musicianship. This concert was certainly no exception.

Next concert on June 13; the last of the season till September.

Published April 24, 2026 by Simon Jenner