Audience Reviews

 

Kate Rusby -  Sunday 2 December

Simon Thomas- South Wales Echo

IT'S hard to believe Kate Rusby is celebrating her 20th year in the music business, admitting she finds it tough to get her head around the idea herself. But it is indeed two decades since the Yorkshire folk singer, a one-time Mercury Prize nominee, first performed on stage.

To mark the anniversary, she recently released a double CD of re-workings of some of her favourite songs from her substantial back-catalogue.

Titled, appropriately enough, 20, it featured collaborations with the likes of Paul Weller and folk giants Richard Thompson, Paul Brady, Dick Gaughan and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Rusby was on tour promoting the album just last month, but now this hard-working lass from Barnsley is back out on the road again, performing her annual Christmas show.

Taking seasonal staples like The Holly and the Ivy, Little Town of Bethlehem and Joy to the World, she re-interprets them as only she can, turning St David's Hall into a Yorkshire pub for the night, with the Cardiff crowd readily joining in the wassailing.

Sweet Bells, her own take on While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night, is a real Christmas classic in the making, while, in addition to the well-known carols, there was also a selection of traditional South Yorkshire songs, with a couple of tracks from 20 added into the mix for good measure.

Backed by an outstanding group of musicians, including her husband Damien O'Kane on guitar, plus a five-strong brass section, Rusby swiftly won over the audience with her charm and obvious love of her material. And then there's her voice. It's hard to convey just how pure and how wonderful it is. All I can advise you to do is check it out.

It's genuinely jaw-dropping and there's no auto-tune trickery involved here, as she proves with her note-perfect live performance.

Imagine Karen Carpenter with Yorkshire vowel soundings and folk leanings and you are getting somewhere close.

But you really do have to hear this remarkable voice. There are now a dozen studio albums to choose from, including two collections of her Christmas songs. Go and investigate. You won't be disappointed.

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Verdi's Requiem - Sunday 25 November

Royal Welsh College Music & Drama Symphony Orchestra

 

The Verdi Requiem on Sunday was the best I ever heard, tremendous, thank you all so much, yours sincerely Pat Harrad (Bristol)

Phenomenal singing, playing and conducting... Carlo Rizzi jumping and stamping - just brilliant......

Our first visit to St David's Hall. The performance was truly amazing, from the quality of the playing from the orchestra, to the quality of the singing of the choirs and the soloists, it was a fully professional performance in all respects. Can't wait for the next RWCMD Symphony Orchestra performance! Steve & Vikki Freestone

Both my husband and I were totally bowled over by Sunday's excellent concert at St David's Hall. We have never had the opportunity to hear the piece in its full version before and were amazed at the quality of the music, from the orchestra through the chorus and to the guest performers. Of course not forgetting the conductor Carlo Rizzi who brought everything together at the most highest standard. The ambience of St David's Hall was first class and created the perfect venue for the magnificent afternoon's performance. Hilary and Graham McDougal

For the Lunchtime performance by RWCMD click here

 

 

Philharmonia Orchestra 13 February
Philip May-Bachtrack
The Philharmonia play Beethoven and Tchaikovsky with Guy and Gardiner in Cardiff

There are times when a concert, even those featuring famous and oft-heard works, can be utterly rejuvenating.

Tonight's performance presented a pair of grand minor-key works by two emotional heavyweights of the 19th century. Presented adjacently, Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto and Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony set each other off very well, though it is interesting to note that the catalogues from which they are taken are somewhat different. Whilst Beethoven was indisputably an emotionally turbulent composer, his Op. 37 concerto sits amid four other piano concerti all in major keys. Tchaikovsky's minor-key Fourth is, by contrast, the rule as opposed to the exception (like Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky seems to have been a naturally-disposed "minor-key" composer in the melancholy Russian vein).

These meaty main courses, however, were preceded by Beethoven's sunny Fidelio overture, reassuring us that we were indeed at a concert, not in mourning. The Philharmonia Orchestra's execution at the outset was bright and crisp and the intermittent punctuating chords were incorporated as part of the overall musical line. Similarly, the Philharmonia maintained a committed impression of forward motion throughout the overture, despite the sudden changes of character. Nevertheless, the slow-moving harmonies were fluid and watery, and the slower-paced, lyrical moments were relaxed and warm, in delightful contrast to the electric staccato figurations from the strings.

After discovering that certain parallels had been drawn between the pianist David Fray and the late Glenn Gould, I was disappointed to find that he had withdrawn from tonight's concert due to ill health. My feelings were quickly dissipated, however, by François-Frédéric Guy, who had stepped in to play Beethoven's Third. As the performance progressed I came to realise that Guy, Edward Gardner and the Philharmonia were, certainly for myself at least, making this more than just yet another fine performance of an excellent concerto. What's more, by the end of the evening, Guy had gone so far as to steal the show for me.

The quiet orchestral opening was full of energy, with the clarity and refinement one might expect from a performance of a Mozart concerto. Gardner and the Philharmonia seemed to deliberately pull their punches in the introductory sforzandi, the reason for which became clear later in the first movement: the performance on offer tonight had far less to do with the opposition of forces and was conceived much more in the spirit of unification and ensemble. The synchronicity between tutti and soloist was effortless and, overall, it was played in a more linear fashion than I have previously encountered. This was most obvious, for example, at the end of the Guy's solos in all three movements, played with such well-judged dynamic balance that the Philharmonia was able to take the musical baton, giving the impression of genuine continuations of larger-scale musical ideas. This was, at times, underpinned by a gesture from Guy, as though offering the music back to the orchestra. What's more, he was not simply absorbed in his own role as the soloist: this was most evident after he had played the very last note of the concerto, when he turned to watch the orchestra, pumping his fists in time with their concluding chords. As an additional point of interest, in keeping with the spirit of an ensemble performance, there was an interaction between the bassoon and oboe at the end of the exposition, made explicit, that I had never before realised was in the score.

Guy's presence was entirely "no fuss" on stage (the occasional hair-toss aside), reminding me of Nelson Freire - economy of movement, but with a highly concentrated and controlled realisation in sound. His opening entry and rapid scales were crisp and articulate, with sparkling trills at the top end of the keyboard towards the end of the first solo. By contrast, he opened the second movement with a rich, warm tone and an intimate, improvisatory pacing that left the audience in a palpable silence.

Following the concerto, the audience cheered when Guy finally returned for an encore: the third movement of Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata, which he played with an engaging flexibility, fire and inventiveness.

By this point it was apparent that synchronicity was the order of the day, carried through into the Philharmonia's performance of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, from the watertight opening chords through to well-paced and controlled large-scale accelerandi in the second movement. A humorous aggravated exchange between the pizzicato strings and woodwind towards the end of the Scherzo was also brought to the fore. Furthermore, the immediate commencement of the explosive final movement also remained within this vein and came as a delightful surprise. This was a CD-quality performance, with teasing executions of Tchaikovsky's characteristic fleeting woodwind scales in the Andantino and raw, lyrical passages from the strings in the Finale. The rapid brass figures in the fourth movement were also really on the button.

Overall, in spite of the solemn tonality of each of the main works tonight, the concert was far from grave, but was thoroughly uplifting due to the irreproachably high standard of music-making that took place.

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BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Rian Evans/Guardian

 

BBC NOW/Søndergård - review
14 October 2012 

In this debut performance as principal conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Thomas Søndergård made his mark with players and audience alike in what will be remembered as a joyous night of music-making.

To open his programme with Magnus Lindberg's EXPO - written for Alan Gilbert's debut as music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2009 - was in itself a bold statement of intent. An elegant and witty celebration of orchestral virtuosity, its series of surges towards climactic peaks defies expectation by ending quietly with a wry smile. Søndergård did it deftly, and went on to deliver the more exuberant humour of Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel with plenty of flourish.

His fellow Dane Inger Dam-Jensen, a soprano who won the Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 1993, was the soloist in two sequences of songs. The first by Grieg included Våren (Spring), more familiar as one of his Elegiac Melodies for string orchestra. Jensen brought to it an artless beauty. In her three songs by Strauss, she showed just why her interpretations of this composer are acclaimed: the colouring and expressivity of the words were subtly realised, with the bloom of her voice at its most radiant in the last song, Cäcilie.

Søndergård proved a sympathetic accompanist. His conducting style combines lyricism with discipline and he has a touch of that indefinable element, charisma. Best augury for his period of tenure, however, was his handling of Sibelius's Fifth Symphony, where the orchestra played their hearts out for him and the silences between the final, massive chords bristled with electricity. Long may they honeymoon.

 

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