YESTERDAYS 10,000 voices sing in the
24 years ago, Cardiff Arms Park hosted the Cor World Choir concert. Here’s how we reported it at the time...
THEY came from all points of Britain, they came from Lake Garda and they came from Atlanta – and even Neil Kinnock decided to join in the action.
The National Stadium on Saturday night, although wet and windy, was a choral Mecca attracting more than 25,000 to hear a Leviathan World Choir of 10,000 voices in a vocal extravaganza which has no equal on earth.
This was Singing in the Rain like you’ve never heard it.
If last year’s inaugural event was less than successful because of variable musical standards, this time it came into its own – a class show which had about it more than a touch or two of inspired planning.
Gone was a military band and in its stead the stylish Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Two names helped pack this green bowl – the amazing ageless, zestful Shirley Bassey and Georgian bass of rare authority, Paata Butchuladze.
Owain Arwel Hughes was doing what he does best, directing a massed choir.
In the event, and thanks to the wizardry of sonic experts, there was in, for instance, such favourites as Llanfair and, the Soldier’s Chorus from Faust and Tydi a Roddaist, a surge, a phalanx, a veritable tidal wave of glorious, perfectly harmonised, totally accurately intonated sound which you simply had to hear to believe.
And for sheer expressiveness, Eli Jenkins’ Prayer, and Were You There were in a class of their own.
So was the irresistible leggy, glitzy Bassey who, the second she emerged into that cold night air had the 25,000 cheering. With such numbers as Hey Jude, and Something, she proved that she is a megastar, a daughter of Cardiff who could probably fill that stadium for a week.
Burchuladze’s Georgian bass had a big, grainy voice and his authority was never more evident than in a aria from The Barber of Seville. Welsh tenor Wynford Evans produced a pleasing lyric sound in Myfanwy.
Treble Oliver Sammons and 13-yearold harpist Catrin Finch flew the flag for youth and the Richard Williams Singers, the first women to take part – though a micro choir by comparison to those ranged behind them – made a sterling job of an Ivor Novello.
The atmosphere was unmistakable, the sense of occasion palpable, and the stunning lighting effects were a son et lumiere show in their own right to complete a night when the event’s potential was at last realised.