The Interview Concerts are back in Worthing for the first time post-pandemic

On Sunday, April 2 at 3pm they will showcase the exciting solo pianist Maya Irgalina at a new Worthing venue: @rtsspaces@sion school.

Series organiser Richard Amey said: “Thanks to pop idolatry, today’s curious music audiences want to know more about their performers. But classical music presentation provides poorly. There’s a picture in the concert programme. A bio is usually a list of places, colleges attended, venues played, star musicians collaborated with, recordings made. More like a job application CV.

“But since 2012, Worthing’s International Interview Concerts have been providing for that listener curiosity and fascination. Conversations with the artist between the music they perform. The audience can even ask their own questions. A guest interviewer has the artist sharing their music, ethos and outlook, their life or career challenges overcome, or currently confronting, sharing career anecdotes, and quite a bit else.

“You still get a full-value programme of music, from a young international musician and artist with a maturing track record, whose accomplishment and personal attitude towards achievement and its enjoyment is a role model for the young. For three and a half years, the West Sussex scene has missed what The Interview Concerts uniquely bring.

"But they return on Sunday, April 2 at 3pm) with solo pianist Maya Irgalina at a new Worthing venue: @rtsspaces@sion school. Under its charity onus, Sion School is offering community multi-arts facilities for small-to-medium music, dance, theatre, visual arts, spoken word and learning events.

“Set In The Round, an Interview Concert audience surround the performer. If solo piano, there are twice the number of keyboard-view seats. It’s relaxed and intimate – yet concentrated, because the player is almost in touching distance. It’s also audience-interactive. Not only their own questions are asked. There are insightful features such as the Mystery Music Spot. Surprises are sprung and all this is how the Interview Concerts take the curious inside classical, and get the connoisseur further clued-up. An authentic concert becomes humanised. The artist talks, smiles, laughs, jokes. The result is inclusive, connective, revelatory. The atmosphere becomes almost convivially domestic!

“Yet the musician still delivers. Maya Irgalina, believes leading song pianist Julius Drake, is an outstanding pianistic talent. Her artistry is expanded by her career parallel of partnering singers. Brighton, in 2021, relished her surprise jazz-classical repertoire add-on, supplementing her baroque, classical, romantic, and impressionist offerings. At Worthing, she’ll add three celebrated Schubert songs, vividly dramatic themselves, pianistically, but transcribed virtuosically by Liszt. Serenade is a treasured love-song but The Erlking, the composer’s most famous composition in his lifetime, and The Doppelganger (the human double) are as mysterious and gripping as Schubert gets – in an enriching programme including Beethoven’s magical Tempest Sonata, whose Shakespearean link will be discussed. French and Spanish picture-painting comes in Ravel’s A Sailing Boat on The Ocean from Miroirs, and Mompou’s The Lake from his Barcelona Landscapes suite.”

@rtsspaces@sionschool, Gratwicke Road, Worthing BN11 4B; https://www.seetickets.com/tour/maya-irgalina-at-the-interview-concerts