To works by Mendelssohn and Schumann, Søndergård added music by two impressive female composers who died far too young and whose works are far less known than they should be, Lili Boulanger and Morfydd Owen.
Affecting Britten, distinctive Elias and popular Elgar, with a curio of arranged Purcell thrown in, from Ryan Wigglesworth and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
Some rare and some great Shostakovich meet in concert while the BBC National Orchestra of Wales make an engrossing case for Sibelius' great Second Symphony.
Bright and energetic Walton and a promising, highly lyrical Concerto from Watkins, followed by taut Webern and commanding Brahms from Søndergård and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
In the first of two successive Proms appearances, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales gave solid performances of two popular scores from the central European repertoire. Malcolm Hayes’s new work, however, proved to be the highlight of the evening.
A superb performance from Chloë Hanslip in the world premiere of Berkeley's Violin Concerto, with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Jac van Steen polished but lacking bite in Dukas and Prokofiev.
Wagner's Die Walküre and Tippett's A Child of Our Time both attempt to capture the essence of humanity. Despite making for an unusual pairing, the programme was an effective one.
Pascal Rophé, Elizabeth Atherton and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales celebrate Dutilleux’s centenary year with five contemporary works associated with the composer
In a quirky programme featuring English, Welsh and Russian music the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales began their new season at St David’s Hall showcasing, with mixed results, their composer-in-association Huw Watkins, Elgar and three Russian composers at different stages in their careers.
Making its fourth Proms appearance this season, the BBC National Orchestra transported the audience from the Orient in Nielsen’s Aladdin, to Ancient Greece for a world première, then to heaven in Mahler’s Symphony no. 4.
The celebratory, cerebral and contradictory elements inherent in this diverse programme of Haydn, Mozart, Poulenc and Stravinsky didn’t quite disguise some uneven performances in Søndergård’s third prom concert.
Cardiff Castle hosted an entertaining bout of medieval jousting yesterday afternoon, but in the evening all eyes and ears turned to the vocal jousting in St David’s Hall.
BBC National Orchestra of Wales's afternoon concert series brings unusual works to light, but the small auditorium can make some of the heavier late-romantic orchestration overwhelming – to the point of being overpowering.
The BBC National Orchestra of Wales crossed the river to England to deliver an evening of the music of Brahms culminating in the giant Symphony no. 1 in C minor, Op. 68.
Inspired by the sight of sixteen swans in flight, the great swinging horn call in the final movement of Sibelius Fifth Symphony is one of the most life-affirming moments in the composer’s output. If this ‘Swan Hymn’ glowed rather than blazed brightly last night, it was the journey there which impressed in the hands of Thomas Søndergård, Principal Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
Birthday boy Richard Strauss was celebrated again at the Proms with two early works, one an acknowledged masterpiece and the other a problem child, in an odd programme that included works by Mozart and Nielsen from the BBC NOW.
A notable London première for William Mathias' finely crafted Violin Concerto, but a fierce, bruising account of Elgar's First Symphony disappoints at the BBC NOW's Prom.
Thierry Fischer and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales presented an eclectic programme, with an exciting première by Simon Holt and the many different facets of 20th century French orchestral music.
With so much focus - understandably - on London's concerts during the Proms season, it is a delight to be able to listen to and attend various other related performances across the UK.
The joy of listening to Brahms’s piano concertos in a concert hall – especially one with such fine acoustics as St David’s Hall, Cardiff – is that textures and harmonies that can sound thick, muddy and ill-balanced in recordings come across with all their intricate, closely-woven contrapuntal writing clear and thrilling.
Arcomis is a Cardiff-based organisation concerned with the promotion and commissioning of new music. Modest yet effective, most of their work is at an essential grass-root level, yet, seemingly out of nowhere, they have conjured an incredibly bold and wide-ranging three-day festival of brass based at Cardiff’s St David’s Hall, the Cardiff University Music Department and the Royal Welsh College
I find it difficult to remember the last time I attended a concert in which I was met with just about everything that I wanted to hear, settled alongside facets of performance that I hadn’t yet encountered. Perhaps tonight was, indeed, my first such experience.Thomas Søndergård’s rendition of Poulenc’s Gloria realised everything that I find I intuitively hope to hear from it.
Only at the Proms could you hear two stalwarts of the 20th-century English school alongside a new concerto by an Indian classical sitar player. To be fair the work, by Holst was entitled Indra and has its roots in the composers study of Indian Sanskrit, which led to a number of works based on Hindu myths – culminating in his beautiful opera Savitri.
The perky new conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Thomas Søndergård, made his second Proms outing with an exciting programme of contrasting works which kicked off with the first UK performance of Colin Matthews’ Turning Point.First performed by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra in 2006, Turning Point is an eighteen-minute work of considerable technical skill.
It’s rather unusual to find one Russian in a programme with three British composers, but Prom 16, with Jac van Steen and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, brought together two of this season’s themes. The first in the 2013 Proms’ Tchaikovsky symphony cycle (no.
Thomas Søndergård made his BBC Proms debut at the end of a successful first season at the helm of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, bringing a hefty programme of Stenhammar, Szymanowski and Strauss to the Royal Albert Hall.It was a fascinating programme, with a first half of relatively underperformed works prefacing Strauss’ popular Alpine Symphony.
Adoring and knowledgeable fans, lots of good humour and a tendency to wear silly hats: this description could fit any Proms audience, but Prom 2 was not quite the usual Prom. For one thing, the silly hats were mostly fezzes, and the audience’s expert knowledge extended to being able to identify the weird alien life forms that had invaded the Royal Albert Hall.
François-Xavier Roth conducted the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in a varied programme of Mozart, Webern and Strauss, concluding with a powerful performance of Also Sprach Zarathustra at St David’s Hall in Cardiff.It was hard to spot a linking factor between the programmed works, but they seemed to complement each other nicely.
On Wednesday evening the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, conducted by Adrian Partington, presented a programme of choral music by the two musical friends Poulenc and Britten.
“Three concertos and an epitaph” is how the Wales Millennium Centre summed up tonight’s concert. Not only did the selected programme focus almost exclusively on three composers’ essays in the concerto genre, but it also spanned a narrow period of time within the mid 20th-century: 22 years in total, or 38 if one includes Andrzej Panufnik’s Katyn Epitaph.
It’s been a busy couple of months for Berlioz’s Requiem in London. First there was Sir Colin Davis’s June performance at St. Paul’s, with the reinforced London Symphony Orchestra’s brass bands arrayed around the dome.
Leonard Bernstein’s Mass is massive. And massively odd. I thought I had prepared myself for what was in store before this piece’s Proms debut on Monday, but actually I hadn’t.
Prom 23 served up a menu of English music from the first half of the 20 century in all its variety, with impressionism by Delius, the lush strings of Vaughan Williams, heroic brass from Ireland, and jazzy, sophisticated excitement from Walton.The programme opened with a warmly affectionate performance of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.
As the programme put it, Prom 16 had a "distinctly watery" theme. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales took its audience on a trip to the Italian and French rivieras, with a staycation in the form of Hugh Wood's thrilling Piano Concerto. It was a challenging programme, which showed in the orchestra's playing more than once, but it was nevertheless an enjoyable experience.
