BBC National Orchestra of Wales new season

31st August 2010

BBC National Orchestra of Wales’ new season of Cardiff concerts will begin on Friday 17 September at 7p.m. at St David’s Hall, where they are Orchestra in Residence, with a musical journey through Russia in all her moods and humours.

The Orchestra’s Swiss Principal Conductor Thierry Fischer will conduct the Orchestra for this opening concert. The programme includes Mussorgsky’s demonic fury and darkness in Night on a Bare Mountain, Tchaikovsky’s grace and elegance in Variations on a Rococo Theme, Rimsky-Korsakov’s fragrant evocation of Russia in Overture, May Night and Symphony No 6 written by Shostakovich in the time of Stalin’s Russia.

French-born cellist Gautier Capuçon will join the Orchestra to perform Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations. Not yet thirty and with a list of achievements under his belt already,  Capuçon has garnered rave reviews the world over for his passionate yet sensitive performances of music from Bach to Britten.

The concert will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3’s Performance on 3 programme.

The new season of twelve concerts at St David’s Hall has a theme of Myth and Story-Telling, using the power of music to bring legends to life with the thrill of a live performance. The season includes Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe, Roussel’s Bacchus et Ariane, Mahler’s Third Symphony and Roméo et Juliette amongst many other great works to be performed.  A Christmas Celebrations family concert with conductor Grant Llewellyn is also planned.

The season will see international and world class conductors and soloists joining the Orchestra including Gautier Capuçon, Katarina Karnéus, Peter Donohoe, Anthony Marwood, Lars Vogt, Viktoria Mullova, Llŷr Williams, Grant Llewellyn, Olivier Charlier, Douglas Boyd, Andrew Litton and the Orchestra’s conducting team Thierry Fischer, Jac van Steen, Tadaaki Otaka and François-Xavier Roth.

In addition music lovers can hear the Orchestra in Cardiff at BBC Hoddinott Hall, the Orchestra & Chorus’s recording and rehearsal home at Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay.  The BBC Hoddinott Hall series will include a short series of concerts focusing on the music of contemporary composers, an evening concert featuring the BBC National Chorus of Wales and a series of afternoon concerts.

Thierry Fischer, Principal Conductor of BBC National Orchestra of Wales looks forward to the new season.

“Every time I open the score of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, with which we end our season, I marvel at the range of colours, inflections and power of which the symphony orchestra is capable. This season we open with the bright, vivid Russian colours of Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, then, later in the season, we will be exploring the entirely different refined French palate of orchestral colours, from Berlioz to Henri Dutilleux. Today’s composers also have found new colours in the symphony orchestra and amongst those contemporary works that we’ll be playing are pieces by John Adams, Thomas Adès and our Composer-in-Association, Simon Holt – composers who have reinvented the symphony orchestra for the twenty-first century.

“We have now been in our new recording and rehearsal home at BBC Hoddinott Hall for over a year. Rehearsing and preparing our performances and performing in this miraculous new hall and playing to our audiences in the wonderful acoustics of St David’s Hall, is helping us realise wonderful scores like these with a new precision and clarity that thrills me every time. “

Further information on subscription tickets, single prices tickets, family tickets and discounts are available from  the BBC National Orchestra of Wales Audience Line on 0800 052 1812.

For further information on BBC National Orchestra of Wales visit bbc.co.uk/now.

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