Review: BBC National Orchestra of Wales Foundations Concert 1

It was splendid to see the BBC National Orchestra of Wales dedicate the first of their Welsh Foundations Concerts to the memory of Peter Reynolds, composer and biographer to this world class band of musicians. He would have been delighted to have been associated with such an event, which featured key works by Daniel Jones, Alun Hoddinott and William Mathias as well as a newer piece, Blue Letters from Tanganika by John Hardy. 

I was particularly pleased to have the chance to hear an alternative performance of the Mathias First Symphony. The recording under the baton of the composer with the same orchestra (albeit in its BBC Welsh days) is essential listening, of course, but the acoustic is rather too vast and the rhythmic control not always very exact. 

The performance, yesterday, began a little unpromisingly. The symphony frequently relies on rhythmic energy to drive it forwards—too slow and the thick orchestration and static harmonies weigh rather heavily. This was exactly the problem in the opening movement, where the tempo left the music feeling ponderous. Elsewhere, however, the performance was excellent, not always superseding the Mathias recording, but always adding new layers of insight. The slow movement, especially, was a thing of beauty; expertly paced as the counterpoints accumulated, superbly expressive and with an overwhelming climax. 

Of the other pieces, Daniel Jones’s Ieuenctid was certainly a revelation. I had always marked his style down as being austere, but perhaps the nature of the commission—an overture to mark the tenth birthday of the National Youth Orchestra of Wales—made him unbutton a little. The Hoddinott Horn Concerto was brilliantly played by Alec Frank-Gemmill, the work itself a typical Hoddinottian mixture of brooding stasis and sardonic kineticism. The brief for the more recently written Blue Letters from Tanganyika by John Hardy was for a work that was accessible to young children, the result a delightful suite of movements that really seemed to capture the essence of Africa.

You can hear the full programme for thirty days on BBC iPlayer.

The next concert in the Welsh Foundations concert, also featuring music by Hoddinott, Mathias and Jones is on 25th November.

Originally posted at Composition:Today ©Red Balloon Technology