The Worthing Symphony Orchestra, with horn soloist Ben Goldscheider, plays Borodin, Strauss and Bruckner in its Viennese New Year Celebration season.
The Worthing Symphony Orchestra are back at the Assembly Hall on Sunday 31 January 2027, with a matinee that starts at 2:45pm. It's part of their Viennese New Year Celebration season, so it's a proper afternoon of orchestral music rather than a late-night affair.
The programme is built around the horn, with Ben Goldscheider taking the solo. He opens with Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia, a short, atmospheric piece that sets the mood before he steps forward for Richard Strauss's Horn Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major. The second half is the heavy lifting: Bruckner's Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, better known as the 'Romantic'. It's a big, sweeping work that takes up the bulk of the afternoon, so you'll want to settle in for it.
If you're not familiar with the orchestra, they call themselves 'the professional orchestra of Sussex'. They've been around in one form or another for a long time: they started as a nine-piece ensemble playing on Worthing Pier back in 1874, became a full-time municipal orchestra in 1926, and moved into the Assembly Hall in 1935. They're currently celebrating their centenary season, playing eight concerts a year at the Hall. It's a venue with a bit of a reputation in its own right — an Art Deco room opened in 1933 that seats just under 1,000 and is prized for its acoustics, a sprung dance floor, a Steinway piano and one of Europe's largest Wurlitzers. Over the years they've hosted soloists like Nicola Benedetti, Jess Gillam, Johan Dalene and Julian Lloyd Webber, and conductor John Gibbons opens every performance with a talk to introduce the music before the first note sounds.
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Tickets start from £18.75 plus a £1.75 transaction fee for Worthing Symphony Orchestra Advance Members, and under-26s pay £6. There's also a season ticket available if you're planning on catching more than one. The concert is at the Assembly Hall, Worthing, BN11 1HJ, on Sunday 31 January 2027 at 2:45pm.
