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Swansea Festival of Music and the Arts 2009:  28th September – 17th October (BK)


As might be expected from Wales’s largest festival of its kind, the Swansea Festival of Music and the Arts once again delivers a cornucopia of outstanding events to brighten the autumn days in South West Wales.

With a three-week programme of events at six venues across the City featuring a vast range of entertainment from symphony orchestras, opera, jazz, chamber and choral music, organ and piano recitals, brass band, and gospel choir to contemporary dance, lectures, music-theatre and visual art exhibitions and installations, there is certainly something to appeal to all tastes and ages.

In Haydn’s bicentennial year, the first concert of the Festival on 3 October at the Brangwyn Hall will see the  Gabrieli Consort  perform Haydn’s The Creation. Conducted by their founder and artistic director Paul McCreesh,  widely recognised for his authoritative and innovative performances on the concert platform and in the opera house, their highly acclaimed recording of this piece was released in March 2008 and won a Gramophone Award for Best Choral Recording. This concert is to be heard in several leading European festivals, including the BBC Proms, during this bicentennial year. The soloists will include soprano Mhairi Lawson, tenor Jeremy Budd and Welsh bass, Neal Davies. The concert is preceded by a lecture on this work at the Guildhall on 28th September - The Creation: Haydn’s Greatest Achievement - given by Prof. David Wyn Jones, Head of the School of Music at Cardiff University.

Continuing to honour Haydn’s anniversary, his music runs throughout the Festival appearing in the following concerts at the Brangwyn Hall. On 5th October one of Britain’s foremost singers of early music, and Haydn specialist, Dame Emma Kirkby,  will include Haydn’s arrangements of Welsh folk songs together with music by Handel and Purcell in a concert with the London Handel Players – all of whom are principal players from the London Handel Orchestra.

Two Haydn Quartets, Quartet in C Op 33 No 3 (Bird) and Quartet No 41 in D major Op 50 No 6 (Frog) are included in the concert given on 6th October by the Fitzwilliam String Quartet, whose world-wide concert schedule takes them across Europe, Russia, North America, Africa and the Far East. The quartet have many international award winning recordings to their name, with their recording (the first of its kind) of Shostakovich’s complete cycle of fifteen quartets being named in Gramophone’s “Hundred Greatest-ever Recordings”.

The  South Korean born  virtuoso pianist  Young-Choon Park, who has enthralled audiences the world over with the refinement and sensitivity of her playing, performs Haydn’s Sonata in E flat as part of a wide-ranging recital on 15th October. A child prodigy, she played the Beethoven Piano Concerto No 1 with the Seoul Symphony Orchestra at the age of nine and went on to study at the Juillard School in New York.

The BBC National Orchestra of Wales will give two concerts during the Festival. The first, on 10th October, will include the epic Organ Symphony by Saint Saens conducted by BBC NOW’s newly appointed associate guest conductor, Francois-Xavier Roth, with his father, Daniel Roth, organist of St Sulpice, Paris, at the organ. In celebration of the 80^th anniversary of Wales’ most prolific and colourful orchestral composer, Alun Hoddinott, the concert will also feature the World Premiere of his BBC commission, Taliesin, completed weeks before the composer’s final illness last year.

Swansea's Brangwyn Hall, a venue of unique significance in the history of music in Wales which celebrates its own 75th anniverary will have  Daniel Roth giving a celebrity recital on its impressive Willis concert organ on October 12th.

The second BBC NOW concert is conducted by their principal conductor, Thierry Fischer, with  Argentinean pianist Nelson Goerner. This concert will feature Beethoven’s Emperor Piano Concerto and Berlioz’s vibrant Symphonie Fantastique in a live Radio 3 Festival broadcast on 14th October.

Welsh National Opera will bring two of the most heart wrenching operas to Swansea’s Grand Theatre from 7th-9th October. There will be two performances of David McVicar’s lavish new production of Verdi’s  La traviata, with exquisite designs and costumes setting the opera unmistakably in the Parisian salons and townhouses of the 19^th century. Conducted by Andrea Licata with Greek soprano Myrto Papatanasiu making her UK debut as Violetta and British tenor Alfie Boe, who won a Tony Award singing Rodolfo in Baz Luhrmann’s La boheme on Broadway, making his debut as Alfredo. There is one performance only of Joachim Herz’s much loved production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly conducted by Carlo Rizzi with Amanda Roocroft returning to the title role of the tragically betrayed Cio-Cio San. Claire Bradshaw is servant Suzuki,  Neal Davies is the  consul, Sharpless, and American tenor Russell Thomas is Pinkerton.

Also at the Grand Theatre, the Soweto Gospel Choir, winners of a recent Grammy Award, bring their unique sounds and style to the Festival on 10th  October and at St James’ Club on the 7th  the Australian-born singer Chris McNulty performs with New York virtuoso guitarist Paul Bollenback and the Dave Cottle Trio in Swansea Jazzland. 

Further Festiva highlights of the Festival include four events At the Taliesin Arts Centre. On 11th  October, the undisputed king and queen of jazz, Dame Cleo Laine and Sir John Dankworth and Band perform in Festival Jazz. On 1st October, direct from London’s South Bank, Classical Indian Dance features two leading proponents of both Bharatanatyam (from south India) and Odissi (from the state of Orissa). Motionhouse Dance Theatre present Scattered on 9th October - a powerful contemporary, highly physical dance production, with film and graphics that will tour into 2010. From 15th-17th October, Theatr Na n’Óg (Land of Eternal Youth) perform a brand new musical comedy, The Bankrupt Bride. Theatr Na n’Og are based in Neath and have been creating captivating theatre for 25 years producing a wide range of theatre tours, residency and schools tours throughout the year.

Youth concerts and projects are always an important feature of the Festival’s work. This year’s Festival Launch in July featured four young Welsh artists in competition for the John Fussell Award for Young Musicians. Youth Brass Day at the Brangwyn Hall on 2nd October, offers young brass players from Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot areas master-classes given by BBC NOW principals and a chance to rehearse with the National Youth Brass Band of Wales prior to their concert at 3pm. The Band, which was founded by the Welsh Amateur Music Federation in 1982, gave their very first concert at the Brangwyn Hall. An outreach project centred on Blaenymaes Primary School will develop young people’s awareness of visual images in music and free tickets for Swansea school children will be available for two orchestral concerts during the Festival. Live Music Now! Wales will bring concerts by young artists to homes for the elderly and to centres for people with special needs.

There are two further lectures at the Guildhall during the Festival, focused on specific areas of historical interest. In Families of the Peninsula on 30th September, Swansea-born author and biographer Paul Ferris traces the history of prominent Gower families. Dr Lyn Davies, Head of Vocal studies at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, marks the centenary years of two Welsh composers and conductors Mansel Thomas and Arwel Hughes (two successive Heads of Music at BBC Wales and pivotal pioneers in the development of Welsh music) with Composers, Conductors and Catalysts – illustrated by students from the college – on 13th October.

A City-wide programme of visual arts runs throughout the Festival period. At the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery a major solo exhibition by award-winning Swansea artist Tim Davies includes Bridges 2009–a study of bridges worldwide with their surrounding locations erased. Amanda Maria's A Still Life at the Taliesin Art Centre searches out contemplative spaces in the Welsh landscape, and Meltdown, at the Mission Gallery, celebrates the significance of iron in Welsh industrial history and in contemporary sculpture. Melt, at the National Waterfront Museum, on 15th October, offers a rare chance to see molten iron being recycled into new sculpture. Swansea-based Locws International celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Brangwyn Hall with newly-commissioned exterior artwork in contemporary response to the interior panels which gave the Hall its name.

Art and Pasta – a tour of all the Festival Exhibitions followed by a pasta lunch - which proved so successful last year, will run again this year on 11th October departing from the Guildhall at 10.30am.

To bring the 2009 Festival to a close on 17th October, the  St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra make a welcome return visit to Swansea. The concert is conducted by  Alexander Dmitriev, who has worked with the Orchestra for more than 30 years. One of this country’s most promising and distinctive cellists, and winner of the 2000 BBC Young Musician of the Year, Guy Johnston, is the soloist. The programme will consist of Saint-Saens Cello Concerto No 1 in A minor and Tchaikovsky’s Suite from Sleeping Beauty and his Symphony No 6 (Pathetique).

Chairman of the Swansea Festival of Music and the Arts, Huw Tregelles Williams, said: “I am delighted that the success of last year’s 60th Anniversary Festival has enabled us, in difficult economic times, to build a programme of quality and diversity. As we this year celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the magnificent Brangwyn Hall with a range of works by composers from seventeenth century England to twenty-first century Wales we are deeply grateful for the collaborative spirit and creative partnerships of our arts venues, the Arts Council of Wales, Taliesin Arts Centre, Welsh National Opera and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Such strong partnerships remain essential to our future.”

Swansea Festival of Music and the Arts is supported by the City & County of Swansea and the Arts Council of Wales, and by a number of commercial and individual sponsors.

All Festival Tickets will be available from 27th July 2009 at:

The Taliesin Art Centre Box Office on 01792 602060 for Taliesin events and at the Grand Theatre Box Office on 01792 475715 for all other events.

The Festival is committed to accessible ticket-prices with a further range of concessions. The web site is www.swanseafestival.org

Bill Kenny