Welsh composers sweeten a birthday feast

Classical BBC National Orchestra of Wales Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff ★★★★★

On April 12 1928, an orchestra with the modest-sounding title of the Western Studio Orchestra gave its first concert in Cardiff.

Ninety years on, the orchestra now known as the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, celebrated with a week of concerts. The last and most eyecatching featured three soloists and music by two Welsh composers.

The first was Three Welsh Songs by Huw Watkins, a composer so intuitively confident that he doesn’t mind letting his influences show. The first song was a rumbustious swinging number, flung off with terrific brilliance by the players. As it subsided, the gentler outlines of All Through the Night appeared in ingenious counterpoint, evoking the shade of Holst’s Somerset Rhapsody. But the pungent harmonies of the final movement showed Watkins is definitely his own man.

It’s a shame, then, that some of that energy didn’t rub off on the following performance of Mozart’s brilliant 22nd Piano Concerto. Given that the soloist was superb Welsh pianist Llŷr Williams, the performance couldn’t fail to be musically subtle. His own cadenza to the finale was full of surprises, including a reminiscence of the previous movement. The wind players offered eloquent solos, under the baton of Grant Llewellyn. But overall the performance felt more precise than brilliant.

After the interval the orchestra was joined by clarinettist Annelien Van Wauwe and violist Eivind Holtsmark Ringstad, who made Max Bruch’s Double Concerto a thing of beauty. The most striking event was saved until last; the third symphony of Welsh composer William Mathias, who died in 1992 at the age of 57. The driving energy and chiselled economy of the outer movements were gripping, but the real heart was the central slow movement. This performance revealed it to be a powerful elegy, shot through with anxiety and mystery. Hear all of the 90th birthday concerts via BBC Radio 3 website bbc.co.uk/radio3