Concert manager for the Brighton Philharmonic tells EDWIN GILSON about the new season at The Dome and the group’s status as proud local institution.

RECENTLY, a news item on the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra’s website referred to the group as ‘your orchestra.’ Speaking to the concert manager of the BPO, Ian Brignall, you get the impression that the orchestra revels in this view of itself as an independent city institution, operating on the support of followers alone and receiving no higher funding.

To draw a reductive political parallel, the BPO is the plucky socialist of classical ensembles.

“All other orchestras have to fulfil requirements of arts councils or local councils, but we are completely and utterly independent,” says Brignall, who was a professional violinist himself before moving into concert management. “That really gives us a lot of pride. Pride in the people in Brighton, too, who support us and want to make sure the orchestra keeps going.”

In this age of cuts to the arts, ‘keeping going’ is usually spoken of in hopeful rather than confident terms by self-motivated creative groups. Yet, over ninety years after forming (in 1925), the BPO remains a local bastion of classical music.

The group has never toured around the UK; partly because, as Brignall points out, carting an orchestra’s worth of instruments around the country is a logistical and financial nightmare, but partly because the aim has always been to focus energies on making Brighton a stronghold - and specifically The Dome, where the BPO now plays all its concerts and where the upcoming season is entirely based.

“It’s the only orchestra of its kind that purely represents its hometown,” says the concert manager. “It really is Brighton’s orchestra.”

Having recently announced its 16/17 season, with one gig a month up until next March (including a special New Year’s Eve concert) Brignall - who curates the programme with conductor Barry Wordsworth - says it is important to showcase a mixture of “old romantic classics” and more obscure material.

For instance, next month’s date on Sunday, October 9 features renditions of work by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - “always popular” - but also English composer William Walton, whose Viola Concerto will be new to many people, reckons Brignall.

“The Walton piece is really great and goes very well with the Tchaikovsky. It’s in the same kind of soundscape. Hopefully people who haven’t heard it will leave and say, ‘I really liked that.’”

Joining the orchestra for these pieces will be Andriy Viytovych, principle viola at the Royal Opera House. While it’s a coup for the group to land such esteemed collaborators in the field, Brignall stresses the BPO’s devotion to helping local musicians through the ranks and into the orchestra.

“We’ve got a few players in the orchestra now who came from Brighton. We’re also increasing our education remit by targeting younger people in an effort to come to the concerts.

“Some of our performers go to schools to do workshops, too. We want to do it, the children want to see it, but we have to get the money from somewhere. We need to get children enjoying orchestras as much as they enjoy sport, for example. They should have an equal chance.”

That said, Brignall acknowledges that “most classical music has a demographic of a certain age group” - i.e, an older one.

The BPO holds its concerts during daylight hours so the audience can get home before dark. “For a while, it has been a certain age group that has come to see the concerts,” says Brignall. “But we have been looking around our audiences over the last few seasons and seen quite a few younger people.

There are a lot of parents who bring their children along, possibly because they are learning the piano, or cello perhaps.”

There is a hope within the orchestra that their film concert - The Best of British Film Scores, on Sunday, December 4 - will pull in film fans who know the score to a certain movie and want to see it rendered live.

Brignall says: “We’re trying to be quite adventurous and not just do the music from Harry Potter and Star Wars. Great music though that is, many other orchestras play that, and we wanted to look down another avenue. We’ve gone down the English composer route - a lot of people will look at these pieces and go, ‘oh he did that one!’ “We’ve got some old favourites like the Dambusters, which will hopefully attract people. I’d like to think people will think it was a really good thing to do on a Sunday afternoon.”

The concert manager believes all of the first half of the programme - the line-up before Christmas - lends itself to film, even if it is not specifically related to the movies.

He cites Johannes Brahms, whose music is at the centre of the BPO’s concert on Sunday, November 6, as an example of a distinctly “theatrical” songwriter.

The Brighton Festival Chorus joins forces with the BPO to perform the German’s sprawling Ein Deutches Requiem, a movement of seven parts. Written in three years following the death of Brahms’s mother, its first performance in 1868 was a real catalyst for his success.

“Brahms’ soundscapes are brilliant, and very popular,” says Brignall. “They lend themselves to the theatrical side of performance really well.”

A fixture in the BPO’s - and wider Brighton’s - calender is the New Year’s Eve concert, which this year sees soprano Rebecca Bottone join the orchestra for a “pilgrimage around the salons of Vienna in the early 19th century - a journey of laughter, champagne and intrigue,” so the company promises.

Having started playing violin at the age of 10, Brignall went to music school and eventually became a professional classical musician before moving into concert management.

He says it’s a “very exciting job - I’m given free reign to pick the music I want to pick,” but also that he doesn’t get much time to practice the violin anymore.

“When you’ve played at a certain stage - I worked a lot with the Philharmonia orchestra - you always have to be at a certain skill level, and I can’t afford the time now to keep up that level.”

If there is any sadness in this statement, it is compensated for by Brignall’s passion for arranging programmes and watching masterful musicians do their thing. Listening to him talk about the forthcoming season, and the venue in which it will be held, reinforces this enthusiasm.

“The Dome is a big place and the symphony orchestra makes the best out of a really stunning venue,” he says. “The audiences that come really want to see a big classical orchestra going full blast, and if you find the right place there’s nothing better.”

What's next for the BPO?

Sunday, October 9, 2.45pm, £12-37

Barry Wordsworth (conductor), Andriy Viytovych (viola)

Playing: Liszt, Walton, Tchaikovsky

The BPO’s 92nd season kicks off with what is arguably the first symphonic tone poem ever written, the dramatic Les Préludes by Franz Liszt, with Barry Wordsworth at the helm of the orchestra. Sir William Walton was 27 when he wrote his Viola Concerto.

The guest soloist is the Ukranian violist Andriy Viytovych, Principal Viola of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Tchaikovsky’s monumental Symphony No.5 concludes the concert.

Sunday, November 6, 2.45pm, £12-37

James Morgan (conductor), Sarah Tynan (soprano), Leigh Melrose (Baritone), Brighton Festival Chorus

Playing: Brahms: Song of Destiny and Ein Deutches Requiem

The seven movements of the Ein Deutches Requiem were written following the death of Brahms’s mother.Its first performance in 1868 marked a turning point in his career.

Sunday, December 4, 2.45pm, £12- 37

Richard Balcombe (conductor)

Playing: Best of British Film Scores

Some of Britain’s greatest film composers are showcased in a programme full of memorable tunes and orchestral writing. Music by Ron Goodman for Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines; Sir William Walton for Henry V; Eric Coates for The Dam Busters and John Ireland for The Overlanders among others.

Saturday, December 31, 2.45pm, £12-37

Stephen Bell (conductor), Rebecca Bottone (soprano)

Playing: New Year’s Eve Viennese Gala

Stephen Bell and the orchestra will be joined by soprano Rebecca Bottone, who will explore the world of the Austrian Strauss family and their many famous waltzes, polkas and marches.

Sunday, January 15, 2017, 2.45pm, £12-37

Ben Gernon (conductor), Joseph Moog (piano)

Playing: Rossini, Grieg, Dvorak

Ben Gernon made his BBC Prom debut in 2014 and has since worked with all the major London and BBC orchestras. He is joined by the 2015 Gramophone Young Artist of the Year, Joseph Moog.

Sunday, March 5, 2017, 2.45pm, £12-37

Christian Mandeal (conductor), Chloe Hanslip (violin)

Playing: Enescu, Korngold, Elgar

Romanian conductor Cristian Mandeal opens this programme with his fellow countryman George Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody No.1 – a feast of vivid folk tunes. Violinist Chloë Hanslip is the soloist in Erich Korngold’s Violin Concerto.