Echoes

Today is the 25th anniversary of the 10,000 Voices at Cardiff Arms Park concert in 1992. This is how we reported on it back then...

THE biggest, most sumptuous, powerful and pulsating choral extravaganza ever staged in Wales – and probably Europe – burst into vivid life in the National Stadium in Cardiff on Saturday night and took the city by storm.

Nearly 8,000 singers from Britain, South Africa, Ukraine, Australia and Italy, before an audience of just under 30,000, established Cardiff as the choral capital of the world.

Think of Verona and opera for thousands in the arena spring to mind, think of Salzburg, Vienna, Berlin and Beyreuth and you have festivals of international status.

From now on, Cardiff is the place to be for an amazing phalanx of choral sound.

Two years ago, David Wyndham Lewis, solicitor turn entrepreneur, had the visionary idea of using the National Stadium event. EMI agreed to record it and Geraint Stanley Jones, the top man at S4C, agreed to televise live the whole show. For more than 30 minutes the rains came, the lightning flashed, giving a preview of the pyrotechnics to come but, in the final event, it was a night of extraordinary standards. For a start, the National Stadium was a transformed setting – atmospheric, pulsating with anticipation. On the platform, below the East Stand, stood conductor Owain Arwel Hughes – the ideal man for this kind of programme. One aspect stands out – the astonishingly accurate intonation of this leviathan choir. They were lusty-sounding in the Soldiers Chorus, powerful and inspiring in Gwahoddiad and frankly, deeply affecting in Myfanwy. Of the soloists, tenor Dennis O’Neill and choirboy of the year Oliver Sammons were easily the most musical. Dennis O’Neill sang Torna a Sorrento for this sort of during a downpour while Oliver sang a setting of The Lord’s Prayer which reduced the stadium to awesome silence.

Tom Jones flew in from Los Angeles and drew a scream or two from his fans with Green Green Grass of Home and, to everybody’s amazement, had to have a copy of the words for I Vow to Thee My Country.

The overall sound was variable, despite state of the art technology. The accompaniment of the four bands of the Guards Division was lacking in accuracy to an amazing extent.

Then came the Battle Hymn of the Republic with the combined forces and all was well.

It was a night of atmosphere, a night of some musical importance, a night when the National Stadium became a kind of temple to Welsh music, thanks to S4C and the original idea of David Wyndham Lewis.