Introducing young children to the world of classical music

SussexWorld

The sheer excitement of their young audiences has always been one of the great rewards as Southern Pro Musica celebrate the 30th anniversary of their Children's Concerts.

Transcript

00:00 Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always lovely to

00:06 speak to Jonathan Wilcox. Now Jonathan, you are heading a very important tradition, aren't you,

00:11 when you bring the children's concerts to Chichester, to Guildford, to Southampton

00:16 in January. And this is something that goes back, what, 30 years in 2020? It does, yes,

00:22 yes. I'm Jonathan Wilcox and I'm Musical Director of the Southern Pro Musica, which is a professional

00:26 chamber orchestra that does concerts of all sorts all over the South. And back in 1994, we decided

00:32 to try and put on a concert specifically for children. And we did that actually in Petersfield.

00:39 And from those small acorn beginnings, since then, over the years, nearly 30 years now,

00:44 we've done nearly 150 children's concerts right across the South, homing in on three wonderful

00:51 venues, one Chichester Festival Theatre, one at Southampton, the Central Hall, and one at Guildford,

00:58 G-Live, which is the big concert hall. And what all those venues have in common is the fact they

01:03 give a wonderful experience for children to be able to see as well as to hear. Chichester Festival

01:08 Theatre, particularly with its thrust stage, allows the orchestra to be pretty much in amongst the

01:13 children. And our aim is to give children aged six to 11 their first experience in many cases

01:22 of hearing live music of a full symphony orchestra playing exciting, colourful repertoire.

01:28 And you were talking about the excitement of your audiences. They love it, don't they?

01:32 Tell me more about the atmosphere of these concerts.

01:35 Well, the atmosphere beforehand, the bubbling away you can hear like children in the playground.

01:41 And then we come on and we start with something really arresting. This year, it's going to be

01:45 the last stage of Rossini's William Tell Overture, which starts with a very exciting trumpet and

01:51 horn fanfare. And you can just see the children go like this, "What is that?" And they're engaged

02:01 so intently. During the music, actually, they're surprisingly sort of quiet. But the moment that

02:09 the music stops, they're going, "Yeah, fantastic, fantastic." And one of the attractions now for

02:15 the last about eight or ten years, we've had as compare for these concerts, Neil Henry,

02:22 who's a wonderful man. He's an actor, he's a musician, but he's also a magician as well.

02:27 And he actually does sort of magic tricks as part of his introductions to the pieces. For example,

02:35 this year, we're doing the finale of Haydn's Trumpet Concerto. And in showing the children

02:41 what a trumpet is, he'll suddenly realise that there's a string of sausages inside the trumpet.

02:46 And he'll sort of say, "Excuse me, I think you've got something in there." And he'll extract a great

02:50 long string of sausages out of the trumpet. It's a way of engaging with the children in a sort of

02:56 attractive way. And from your point of view, it must be lovely to think that you are giving these

03:00 children memories which will last a lifetime, won't they? The impact, the excitement, it will

03:05 always be. Absolutely, yes. And schools give us tremendous feedback. They say that the children

03:10 have been talking about nothing else since, you know, what was that instrument? And we give them

03:16 quite a lot of preparation help in as much as they know what pieces of music are going to be played,

03:21 we feed it to the schools. And always the concerts conclude with a song for children,

03:27 which is accompanied by orchestra, which we do a little rehearsal as part of the concert.

03:32 And we give the music, including a recording of it and rehearsal aids to all the schools,

03:38 they can access it via the website. So that those who've got the capacity to do it can learn the

03:44 song in advance, which gives them, you know, another element to it. And over the years,

03:49 we've found what really works about eight or nine short pieces, which are introduced in a way that

03:58 allows the children to know what they're going to look for, what they're going to listen for,

04:02 which instruments are going to be more prominent. And for many of them, they've no idea that an

04:07 orchestra is made up of different families of instruments, the strings, and then the wind and

04:11 the brass and the percussion. And so it's a mixture of education and entertainment.

04:17 And it sounds truly lovely. And to just give those dates again, you're in Chichester Festival

04:21 Theatre. We're in Chichester on Tuesday, January the 16th. And Guildford G Live.

04:26 And Guildford G Live is Wednesday, January the 17th. And then the Central Hall in Southampton

04:34 on Thursday, January the 18th. And there's a concert in the morning from 10.45 to 11.45.

04:41 And in the afternoon from 1.30 to 2.30. Ideally fitting in with the school day.

04:45 Well, that's absolutely perfect. Congratulations on the 30th anniversary of these concerts.

04:51 Thank you. And each season now we reach round about 5,000 children with each of these series,

04:57 which is just wonderful. And I'm really looking forward to this in January again.

05:02 That's a major achievement. Lovely to speak to you. Thank you.

05:04 Thank you, Phil.

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