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Leader Lesley Hatfield 

Conductor Thomas Søndergård 

Soprano Inger Dam-Jensen 

Magnus Lindberg EXPO (10’) 

Edvard Grieg Four Songs (12’) 

Richard Strauss Three Songs (8’) 

Richard Strauss Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (15’) 

Interval (20’) 

Jean Sibelius Symphony No. 5 (33’) 

Following tonight’s concert there will be a brief Q&A in the main auditorium with 

Thomas Søndergård and Rhodri Talfan Davies, Director of BBC Cymru Wales. Please 

remain seated if you wish to listen. It will last for around 15 minutes. 

This evening’s concert is being broadcast live by BBC Radio 3 and will be 

available for on-demand listening via the BBC iPlayer for seven days. 

The concert is presented by Nicola Heywood Thomas. 

Our programme notes are also available to download at bbc.co.uk/now 

Family notes on tonight’s concert are available from the Orchestra Information Desk. 

St David’s Hall, Cardiff Friday 12 October 2012, 7.30pm

BBC National Orchestra of Wales 

Forthcoming concerts 

St David’s Hall, Cardiff 

Friday 2 November 2012, 7.30pm 

WAGNER Lohengrin – Act 1 Prelude 

BRAHMS Violin Concerto 

ZEMLINSKY Lyric Symphony 

Conductor Jac van Steen 

Violin Viviane Hagner 

Soprano Elizabeth Atherton 

Baritone Roman Trekel 

Friday 14 December 2012, 7.30pm 

HANDEL Messiah 

Conductor François-Xavier Roth 

Soprano Susan Gritton 

Mezzo-soprano Delphine Galou 

Tenor Topi Lehtipuu 

Bass Matthew Brook 

BBC National Chorus of Wales 

Friday 25 January 2013, 7.30pm 

BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 5, ‘Emperor’ 

BRITTEN Spring Symphony 

Conductor David Atherton 

Piano Paul Lewis 

Soprano Elizabeth Atherton 

Alto Jennifer Johnston 

Tenor Andrew Kennedy 

BBC National Chorus of Wales 

Cardiff Polyphonic Choir 

BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff Bay 

Tuesday 16 October 2012, 2.00pm 

PROKOFIEV Symphony-Concerto 

VASILY KALINNIKOV Symphony No. 1 

Conductor Thomas Søndergård 

Cello Andreas Brantelid 

Friday 26 October 2012, 7.00pm 

CAMBERWELL COMPOSERS’ COLLECTIVE 

CHRISTOPHER MAYO The Llano Curve 

ANNA MEREDITH Barchan 

CHARLIE PIPER Kick up the fire 

EMILY HALL Love Songs 

MARK BOWDEN Sudden Light 

Conductor Andrew Gourlay 

Singer Mara Carlyle 

Trombone Donal Bannister 

Monday 29 October 2012, 7.30pm 

THE PIANO 

A gala concert bringing to a close BBC Radio 3’s 

autumn piano focus. In an evening of piano concertos 

BBC Hoddinott Hall will feature the virtuosic mastery 

of artists including Kathryn Stott and Noriko Ogawa. 

Monday 12 November 2012, 7.30pm 

ELGAR Overture ‘Cockaigne’ (In London Town) 

BRUCH Violin Concerto No. 1 

RACHMANINOV Symphonic Dances 

Conductor David Atherton 

Violin Tasmin Little 

Tonight’s programme 

A warm welcome to this evening’s concert, a particularly special occasion as it 

marks Thomas Søndergård’s debut as Principal Conductor of BBC National 

Orchestra of Wales. He is particularly renowned in Nordic repertoire so it’s apt 

that there should be three strikingly contrasting examples on the menu. 

We begin with EXPO by the Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg. It’s an 

apposite curtain-raiser as he wrote it to mark the start of another auspicious 

partnership: that between the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and its Music 

Director Alan Gilbert. Lindberg is seen in some circles as the natural successor 

to Sibelius, whose Fifth Symphony is one of the masterpieces of the 20th 

century and a work whose immediacy belies the struggle the composer faced 

in completing it. 

Grieg and Richard Strauss were both consummate songwriters, and both were 

influenced by their singer-wives. Danish soprano Inger Dam-Jensen, a great 

favourite with Cardiff audiences ever since she won the BBC Cardiff Singer of 

the World, presents a selection of some of their most ravishing creations. And 

Strauss returns to take another bow, in his most irrepressible tone-poem, 

Till Eulenspiegel. 

Introduction 

Please turn off all mobile phones and digital watches during the performance. 

Try to stifle unavoidable coughs until the normal breaks in the performance. 

Photography and recording is not permitted. 

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Programme notes Programme notes 

Magnus Lindberg (born 1958) 

EXPO (2009) 

The speculation had been growing for some time 

as to who was going to succeed Lorin Maazel as 

chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic. 

The names of several grandees of the baton had 

been bandied about when on 18 July 2007 the 

announcement was made, a refreshingly farsighted 

one: it was to be Alan Gilbert, a native 

New Yorker then not yet 40 and, what’s more, a 

‘son’ of the orchestra – his father had played in 

the violins until his retirement and his mother still 

does. Gilbert has a reputation as a bold conductor 

of contemporary music and before his first 

concert as Music Director, which fell on 16 

September 2009, Gilbert made it clear that his 

programmes were going to be less conservative 

than those of his immediate predecessors (Lorin 

Maazel, Kurt Masur and Zubin Mehta), appointing 

Magnus Lindberg as the orchestra’s composer-inresidence. 

When EXPO opened that first concert, 

the symbolism was clear: Lindberg was only the 

third composer, after Bernstein and Copland, to 

write a work to open a New York Philharmonic 

season. 

Lindberg’s programme note for the premiere 

outlined some of the ideas that went into the 

piece: 

The title is self-explanatory: it’s the exposition of 

Alan’s season. I work with extremely strong 

contrasts, setting up some contrasts between 

super-fast and super-slow music and then a 

strange amalgam between these poles. It’s a 

piece built on qualities I find so gorgeous in 

Alan’s way of making music – absolute technical 

and physical straightness, no mystery around the 

rational part of it, and then on top of that the 

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highly irrational and mysterious part of how you 

actually put music together. 

Given the brevity of the piece – around 10 

minutes – I thought a pithy word such as ‘EXPO’ 

would make a fitting title; besides, I like the 

sound of the word. A work of any length must 

have a trajectory, a sense of direction and logic 

about the way it evolves. I have tried to establish 

a musical language to communicate this drama. 

As short as EXPO is, there are more than 10 

tempo markings, resulting in a feeling of great 

tension and energy in the orchestra. 

EXPO begins by establishing Lindberg’s ‘strong 

contrasts’: rushing string figuration in the upper 

strings which is swiftly set against a stately 

chorale-like idea in the brass. The two alternate 

briefly and then begin to coalesce – combining two 

streams of music in different tempos is a favourite 

Lindberg habit. After a climax marked by a lusty, 

clodhopping dance from the brass, swirling harp 

and violins suggest the play of waves and the 

music broadens out as in a seascape. At this point 

in the score Lindberg indulges in a private nod of 

thanks. Just as Shostakovich used the horns to call 

out the name of an inamorata in his 10th 

Symphony, so Lindberg writes a motto into the 

score – ‘Alle guten Dinge sind drei’ (all good things 

come in threes) – and translates three names into 

notes which the horns and trumpets call out: Zarin 

Mehta (president of the New York Philharmonic), 

Alan Gilbert and Matías Tarnopolsky (who was 

then the orchestra’s vice-president of artistic 

planning). The timpani underline the horn 

statement and a brief but gorgeous melody 

emerges in harmony from the cellos. Fluttering 

flutes suggest the Arctic birds of Lindberg’s 

compatriot and former teacher Einojuhani 

Rautavaara, the rushing strings and chorale of the 

opening re-emerge and the music rises to, and 

sinks from, another climax; as the strings continue 

to eddy, trumpets with cup mutes bring an 

American flavour to the sound. The clodhopping 

dance strides out again and is swept into another 

climax, scored with astonishing richness – what 

seems like an allusion to Strauss’s Also sprach 

Zarathustra may not be entirely a coincidence. As 

the music calms down, the cello harmonies are 

heard again before the strings and woodwind, 

capped by a piccolo, barrel onwards excitedly. 

Lindberg blends his fast and slow tempos one last 

time before EXPO settles into a sumptuous 

pianissimo chord spread across the entire orchestra 

and sinks into silence. 

Programme note © Martin Anderson 

Martin Anderson writes on music – often on Nordic 

and Baltic composers – for a number of publications, 

including ‘The Independent’ and ‘Tempo’ in the UK and 

‘Fanfare’ in the USA. He also publishes books on music 

and releases CDs. 

About the composer 

Over the past decade and a half Magnus 

Lindberg’s position as one of the most widely 

heard of all contemporary composers has been 

reinforced by performance after performance; he 

is certainly the most popular Finnish composer 

since Sibelius. That achievement is the more 

telling when you consider that he made his mark 

with large-scale orchestral scores of considerable 

complexity. 

The piece that first put Lindberg’s name before a 

wider international public was his huge, halfhour-long 

Kraft, for a concertante group of seven 

soloists and orchestra: in 1986 it won both the 

music prize of the Nordic Cultural Council and an 

award from the UNESCO Rostrum of Composers. 

But the very Expressionist zeal which brought 

Kraft such attention gave Lindberg himself pause 

for thought, and he spent some time 

reconsidering his musical means. Why, he 

wondered, had modern music turned its back on 

the directional strength supplied by Classical 

harmony? 

The result was a new inclusiveness in his style, 

and the works he has composed since that 

Damascene enlightenment, beginning with the 

orchestral triptych Kinetics (1988–9), Marea and 

Joy (both 1989–90), have combined modernist 

colour and Classical symphonic strength in a 

musical language of ever-increasing 

resourcefulness and approachability. The sheer 

physical impact of Lindberg’s major orchestral 

scores accounts for some degree of their 

immediate appeal but there’s another factor 

involved, something rare in contemporary music 

– a sense of fun. 

The architecturally informed harmonic thinking 

revealed in the Kinetics/Marea/Joy trilogy was 

deployed at full strength in what is probably 

Lindberg’s most important work to date, the 

deeply moving Aura (in memoriam Witold 

Lutosławski), composed in 1993–4. Lindberg 

describes the piece as a concerto for orchestra 

– but with four movements, and at 40 minutes 

long, it is a symphony in all but name, and one 

possessing a profundity and power that justify 

its place downstream from Beethoven, Brahms, 

Mahler, Sibelius and the other masters of 

symphonic form. 

The works since Aura have underlined Lindberg’s 

mastery. Another orchestral triptych – Feria 

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(1997), Parada (2001) and Cantigas (1997–9) – 

enjoys an electrifying charge of energy. And 

Sculpture, written in 2005 to celebrate Frank 

Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, 

again demonstrates that sure-footed command of 

large-scale symphonic structure, so that the 

Classical restraint of the Violin Concerto (2006), 

scored for chamber orchestra, surprised many 

listeners who by now thought they had the 

measure of the composer. Seht die Sonne is a 

25-minute orchestral triptych commissioned by 

the Berlin Philharmonic in 2007 and given its UK 

premiere at the BBC Proms the following year. 

Three works resulted from Lindberg’s three years 

as composer-in-residence with the New York 

Philharmonic Orchestra: EXPO (2009), being 

heard in this evening’s concert; Al largo (2009– 

10), an expansive tone-poem which integrates 

fast and slow tempos rather as a seascape 

simultaneously presents the capricious play of the 

waves and the immense, slow power of the deep; 

and a Second Piano Concerto (2011–12), heard for 

the first time in May this year and described as a 

‘monster’ in The New York Times. Lindberg’s next 

big score is a commission from the Royal 

Concertgebouw Orchestra, to be heard in January 

next year. 

Profile © Martin Anderson 

Find out more 

www.boosey.com 

Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) 

Four Songs 

Two brown eyes, Op. 5 No. 1 (1864, 

orch. Painter) 

I love you, Op. 5 No. 3 (1864, orch. Reger) 

A swan, Op. 25 No. 2 (1876, orch. Grieg) 

Spring, Op. 33 No. 2 (1881, orch. Grieg) 

Inger Dam-Jensen soprano 

Nina Hagerup seems to have been a singer 

possessed of what that wildly entertaining song 

parodist Anna Russell described as ‘great artistry 

but very little voice’. To be fair, the voice by all 

accounts was perfectly pretty, but it was the 

artistry that inspired the greatest songs of the 

man Nina married in 1867, Edvard Grieg. 

According to a fellow singer, Nina ‘plumbed the 

depths of individual words’, which accorded well 

with Grieg’s avowed intention to ‘allow the text 

to speak’. He was possessed by the lyrics, and his 

gift was essentially lyric in miniature, even in the 

handful of more ambitious constructions such as 

the Piano Concerto and the Symphonic Dances. In 

smaller forms, such as the works for solo piano 

and voice with piano or orchestra, his inspiration 

always went straight to the heart of the matter. 

Even so, as he told his American biographer: 

I don’t think I have a greater talent for 

composing songs than for any other musical 

genre. Why, then, have songs played such a 

prominent role in my music? Quite simply 

because I, like other mortals, was (to use 

Goethe’s phrase) once in my life endowed with 

genius. And that flash of genius was: love. I 

loved a young woman with a marvellous voice 

and an equally marvellous gift as an interpreter. 

This woman became my wife and has remained 

my life’s companion to this day. She has been, I 

daresay, the only true interpreter of my songs. 

It is certainly true that the flame of Grieg’s 

inspiration was first fanned in his Op. 5 collection, 

Melodies of the Heart, composed in Copenhagen 

not long after his betrothal to Nina in 1864 (her 

parents disapproved; hence the three-year 

engagement). The author is none other than Hans 

Christian Andersen and the poems – from which 

Grieg selected the happier inspirations – chart 

Andersen’s own unrequited adoration of a young 

woman named Riborg Voigt. Grieg’s settings were 

a gift for his fiancée in a gesture akin to Strauss’s 

wedding present for Pauline, and at the tender 

age of 21 he hit upon the song for which he is 

most famous, ‘Jeg elsker dig’ (‘I love you’). 

Discreet chromaticisms in the accompaniment 

subtly complement the singer’s more 

straightforward effusions, which build to an 

accelerating, operatic intensity in the fivefold 

declaration of ‘I love you’. There is only one verse 

in the original, a perfect lyric miniature, though a 

second was infelicitously added without Grieg’s 

approval. ‘Two brown eyes’, again setting 

Andersen, is even simpler – a little gem in which 

the voice coasts with loving delight over the 

tripping accompaniment. 

Grieg only orchestrated seven of his 180 or so 

songs, and the two examples we hear tonight are 

masterpieces. ‘En svane’ (‘A swan’), from the 

composer’s only group of Ibsen settings, 

combines a characteristic Nordic freshness with a 

note of heartache for the bird who sings in death. 

The same bittersweet quality informs ‘Våren’ 

(‘Spring’), perhaps best known as one of the 

Elegiac Melodies for string orchestra: it is the 

apogee of Grieg’s generous melodic word-setting 

and his wife’s ability to plumb the depths of a 

poem, each of the verses unfolding logically and 

without repetition. 

Programme note © David Nice 

David Nice is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster on 

music who contributes regularly to Radio 3’s ‘CD 

Review’ and ‘BBC Music Magazine’. The first volume of 

his Prokofiev biography was published in 2003 and he 

is currently working on the second. 

For texts, see page 9 


Well over a century after his death, Edvard 

Hagerup Grieg (born 15 June 1843 in Bergen) 

remains the foremost of Norwegian composers. 

He was also the first composer from the Nordic 

countries to win international acclaim. His 

surname was actually of Scottish derivation: his 

great-grandfather changed his name from Greig 

to Grieg when he took Norwegian nationality in 

1779. But Grieg’s sense of Norwegian nationality 

was increasingly central to his work. Many 

melodies presumed to be Norwegian folk songs 

were really composed by Grieg. In fact, he rarely 

used original folk music in his works but he 

understood its language, its moods, inflections 

and thinking so deeply that creating original ‘folk’ 

tunes became almost a reflexive action for him. 

Initially Grieg was thoroughly schooled in the 

Romantic German repertoire. Hearing the teenage 

Grieg at the piano, the violinist and composer 


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Programme notes 

Ole Bull persuaded his parents to send him to 

the Leipzig Conservatory, where he studied with 

the Schumann enthusiast E. F. Wenzel and heard 

Schumann’s widow Clara playing her husband’s 

Piano Concerto, which left a lasting impression. 

But Grieg was unhappy in Leipzig and the strain 

probably contributed to an attack of pleurisy in 

1860, which left him with lifelong respiratory 

problems. 

After Leipzig, Grieg studied in Copenhagen with 

the Danish composer Niels Gade, on whose 

instruction he composed a symphony – which, 

however, he later withdrew. Far more successful 

was the now famous Piano Concerto (1868, 

rev. 1907), in which Grieg’s lyrical gifts find 

magnificent early flowering. Thereafter he 

found worldwide fame chiefly as a miniaturist 

– especially in the songs and 10 books of 

Lyric Pieces for piano – and in chamber works: 

outstanding among these is the G minor String 

Quartet (1877–8), which strongly influenced 

Debussy’s only String Quartet. 

Grieg’s immersion in Norwegian folk music 

began in earnest when he discovered Lindeman’s 

pioneering collection Norwegian Mountain 

Melodies and befriended Rikard Nordraak 

(1842–66), composer of the Norwegian National 

Anthem. In 1867 Grieg married his cousin, Nina 

Hagerup, a fine singer for whom Grieg composed 

many of his songs. Setting the poetry of his 

great compatriots Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and 

Henrik Ibsen led to productive relationships 

with both men, resulting in theatre music for 

Bjørnson’s Sigurd Jorsalfar (1872) and the score 

for Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (1874–5), one of Grieg’s 

crowning achievements. As Grieg’s understanding 

of Norwegian folk music deepened, he strove less 

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and less to ‘domesticate’ its astringencies, and 

late compositions such as the Slåtter (‘Norwegian 

Dances’, 1902–3) for piano can sound strikingly 

modern for their time. Years later, the great 

Hungarian modernist and ethnomusicologist 

Béla Bartók acknowledged Grieg’s importance 

as innovator and renewer: ‘He was the first of us 

who threw away the German yoke and turned to 

the music of his own people’. 

Profile © Stephen Johnson 

Stephen Johnson was for many years a critic for 

both ‘The Independent’ and ‘The Guardian’; he writes 

for ‘BBC Music Magazine’ and is the author of books 

on Bruckner, Mahler and Wagner. He is a regular 

presenter of BBC Radio 3’s ‘Discovering Music’. 


Anne Sofie von Otter; Bengt Forsberg 

(DG 437 521-2) 

Grieg Robert Layton (Omnibus) 

www.griegsociety.org 

1 To brune øjne 

To brune Øjne jeg nylig saa, 

I dem mit Hjem og min Verden laa. 

Der flammed’ Snillet og Barnets Fred; 

Jeg glemmer dem aldrig i Evighed! 

2 Jeg elsker Dig 

Min Tankes Tanke ene du er vorden, 

Du er mit Hjaetes første Kjaerlighed. 

Jeg elsker Dig som Ingen her på Jorden, 

jeg elsker Dig i Tid og Evighed. 

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–75) 

3 En Svane 

Min hvide svane, du stumme, du stille, 

Hverken slag eller trille lod sangrøst ane. 

Angst beskyttende alfen, som sover, 

Altid Iyttende gled du henover, 

Men sidste mødet, da eder og øjne 

Var lønlige løgne, ja da, da lød det! 

I toners føden du slutted din bane. 

Du sang i døden; du var dog en svane! 

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) 

Two brown eyes 

Two brown eyes I recently saw, 

in them my home and my world lay. 

There flourished wisdom and child-like peace; 

I will never forget them! 

I love you 

My thought of thoughts you alone have become, 

you are my heart’s first beloved. 

I love you as no-one else here on earth. 

I love you now and to eternity. 

Translations © Beryl Foster 

Text 

A swan 

A white swan, mute and silent, 

not a throb nor a warble was heard of your voice. 

Anxiously hiding from elves that slumber, 

ever listening, you glided on, 

but the last meeting, when oaths and eyes 

were secret lies – yes then, then it sounded! 

In the birth of sound your course was ended. 

You sang in death; you were but a swan! 

Please turn the page quietly 

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Text 

4 Våren 

Enno ein Gong fekk eg Vetren at sjå 

For Våren å røma; 

Heggen med Tre som der Blomar var på 

Eg atter så bløma. 

Enno ein Gong fekk eg Isen å sjå 

Frå Landet at fljota. 

Snjoen å bråna og Fossen i Å 

Å fyssa og brjota. 

Graset det grøne eg enno ein Gong 

Fekk skoda med Blomar; 

Enno eg høyrde at Vårfuglen song 

Mot Sol og mot Sumar. 

Eingong eg sjølv i den vårlege Eim, 

Som mettar mit Auga, 

Eingong eg der vil meg finna ein Heim 

Og symjande lauga. 

Alt det, som Våren imøte meg bar 

Og Blomen, eg plukka, 

Federnes Ånder eg trude det var, 

Som dansa og sukka. 

Derfor eg fann millom Bjørkar og Bar 

I Våren ei Gåta; 

Derfor det Ljod i den Fløyta eg skar, 

Meg tyktes å gråta. 

Åsmund Vinje (1818–70) 


Spring 

Once again I could see winter 

yielding to the spring, 

whitethorn with clusters of flowers 

I saw blooming again. 

Once more I saw ice 

receding from the earth, 

snow melting, waterfalls tumbling in spray, 

the river flowing fast. 

The green grass once again 

I could see clothed in flowers; 

again I could hear the spring lark’s song 

to sun and summer. 

Once more I am drawn to the spring vale 

that sates my eye’s longing, 

to find again a home 

where I swim in rapture. 

All that the spring bore towards me, 

each bloom for the plucking, 

the souls of our forefathers I seemed to see, 

dancing and sighing. 

Thus I found, among birches and spruces, 

in spring a mystery; 

the flute I cut from the reed 

seemed to weep. 

Translations © Kristina Moseley 

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) 

Three Songs 

Muttertändelei, Op. 43 No. 2 (1899, 

orch. 1900) 

Meinem Kinde, Op. 37 No. 3 (1897) 

Cäcilie, Op. 27 No. 2 (1894, orch. 1897) 

Inger Dam-Jensen soprano 

Both sets of songs in tonight’s programme owe 

their special character to the vocal abilities of the 

two composers’ wives. The young Richard Strauss 

had already written several songs destined to last 

before he met capricious Major-General’s daughter 

and budding singer Pauline de Ahna in 1887. It was, 

however, their marriage in 1894 which launched a 

wedding bouquet of songs still among his 

best-loved, including ‘Morgen’ (‘Tomorrow’) and 

tonight’s ‘Cäcilie’. Pauline won critical plaudits as a 

soprano both on the recital platform and in the 

opera house, where she achieved notable success 

as the heroines of Strauss’s first opera Guntram 

and of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, conducted for 

the first time in 1892 by her husband-to-be. 

The flourishing of Strauss’s song-writing art 

coincided with Pauline’s distinguished career, 

which she finally relinquished in 1908. Many of his 

settings bear in mind her exemplary breath control, 

which Strauss was to praise not only in the way 

she sang his own music but also in Pamina’s 

lament from Mozart’s The Magic Flute and 

Elisabeth’s Prayer in Wagner’s Tannhäuser. The long 

soprano lines were to continue throughout his 

works long after Pauline’s premature retirement, 

throughout a number of loveable operatic roles – 

including the difficult but fundamentally loving 

wife in the marriage-comedy Intermezzo with its 

thinly veiled portrait of Frau Strauss as Christine 

Storch – and, at the end of their long lives, in the 

arching phrases of the Four Last Songs. 

‘Muttertändelei’ (‘Tantalising’) is by far the most 

familiar among three 1899 settings of ‘old German 

poets’, and the only one to be orchestrated the 

following year, premiered in that form by Pauline. It 

belongs to the vein of Bavarian wit and good 

humour that Strauss first displayed in his tonepoem 

Till Eulenspiegel (which you’ll be able to hear 

later tonight) and it also looks forwards to the 

mock-epic treatment of the Strausses’ home life in 

the Symphonia Domestica. Pauline, perhaps, would 

not have gone as far in holding up her baby son 

Franz for admiration as this chatterbox mother 

does in extolling her paragon infant, but the vocal 

writing is as delicious as the woodwind details, 

which include the new opening bars for clarinet 

and bassoon in the orchestration. 

‘Meinem Kinde’ (‘My Child’) is a lullaby capturing 

the tenderer side of motherhood, keenly 

anticipated by the Strausses at the time: the song 

was written in February 1897; their son Franz was 

born in April. The beauty of the song is 

heightened by the accompanying chamber group 

of 10 solo musicians. ‘Cäcilie’ (‘Cecilia’), 

orchestrated in the same year as ‘Meinem Kinde’, 

belongs to the wedding group of 1894, vintage 

Straussian love music at its most ardent. 

Programme note © David Nice 

For texts, see page 14 


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Born in Munich the year before the premiere of 

Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde and dying the year 

after the composition of Boulez’s Second Piano 

Sonata, Richard Strauss had a varied career that 

bridged seven turbulent decades. As with Wagner 

and Boulez, the young firebrand would eventually 

become part of the Establishment he had seemed 

keen to overthrow – a rapprochement more 

problematical to us today than his earlier 

antagonism. Strauss’s early tone-poems cast aside 

the conservative models favoured by his 

horn-player father Franz, their programmatic 

aspirations coloured with a bold and vivid 

orchestral palette. By 1900 this remarkable 

sequence of pieces included Don Juan, Death and 

Transfiguration, Till Eulenspiegel, Also sprach 

Zarathustra, Don Quixote and Ein Heldenleben. 

The new century saw Strauss’s energies directed 

primarily towards opera, the lurid, nightmarish 

worlds of Salome and Elektra serving further to 

enhance a well-cultivated notoriety. 

Der Rosenkavalier (1909–10) represented a 

marked change of tack for Strauss and his 

collaborator, Hugo von Hofmannsthal: in place of 

some mythic tale of bloodlust and parricide, here 

was a farce-cum-lyrical comedy consciously 

modelled on Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. 

Critical opinion has been fairly harsh towards 

much of his later output, at least until the onset 

of an extraordinary Indian summer. While 

Metamorphosen (1945) and the Four Last Songs 

(1948) are acknowledged as poignant, valedictory 

masterpieces, his intervening works can seem 

well-wrought rather than consistently inspired, 

content to mine a depleted (and increasingly 

anachronistic) seam. 

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On a personal level, too, Strauss has been 

attacked for his egotism and insensitivity – 

certainly, his association with the Nazi regime 

seems ill-judged. But Strauss is best seen as a 

product of Imperial Germany for whom the 

Weimar Republic was an ineffectual interlude, and 

neither his casual anti-Semitic remarks nor his 

hostility to democracy makes him a war criminal. 

As Otto Klemperer remarked, his reasons for 

staying may have been primarily financial – 

‘because in Germany there were 56 opera houses, 

and in America only two’. Yet, having incurred the 

wrath of Goebbels for insisting on the rights of 

Stefan Zweig, the Jewish librettist of his Die 

schweigsame Frau (1933–4), Strauss wrote a 

famously abject letter to Hitler, praising him as 

‘the great architect of German social life’. 

If Strauss the man seldom seemed overburdened 

by considerations of good taste, sensitivity and 

insight constantly invade his work, not least his 

200-odd songs. In his more tender moments the 

bluff, bourgeois exterior is left behind. It says 

something for him that his exhibitionistically 

shrewish wife Pauline pined away and died soon 

after their 54-year marriage ended with his death. 

Characteristically, Strauss himself once issued his 

own testimonial in the most brusque of terms, 

telling an orchestra, ‘I may not be a first-rate 

composer, but I am a first-class second-rate one.’ 

Profile by David Gutman © BBC 

David Gutman is the author and/or editor of books 

on subjects ranging from Prokofiev to John Lennon 

and is a regular contributor to ‘Gramophone’. He has 

written the Proms Further Listening & Reading notes 

since 1996. 


Inger Dam-Jensen; Malcolm Martineau 

(Altara ALT1033) 

Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma 

Michael Kennedy (CUP) 

www.richardstrauss.at 

Player profile 

David Haime cello 

What first sparked your interest in 

performing as a professional cellist? 

I studied the cello with Phillip Kent, a former 

principal of the BBC Welsh Orchestra, and 

was first inspired to make music my career 

after attending ‘Friday Night is Music Night’ 

concerts, given by the Orchestra in Cardiff’s 

City Halls. 

What do you enjoy about being a 

professional musician? 

Making music with such wonderful 

musicians is a thrill. And I have played in 

concerts with some amazing soloists and 

conductors over these past 34 years. 

What has been the most memorable 

moment of your career with BBC National 

Orchestra of Wales? 

There have been many! One that rates very 

highly is the television recording of a 

Tchaikovsky symphony cycle we 

performed with Mariss Jansons. All our 

foreign tours bring back great memories, 

too: America, Japan, Russia and, most 

recently, China. 

bbc.co.uk/now 13

Text 

1 Muttertändelei 

Seht mir doch mein schönes Kind, 

Mit den goldnen Zottellöckchen, 

Blauen Augen, roten Bäckchen! 

Leutchen, habt ihr auch so eins? 

Leutchen, nein, ihr habt keins! 

Seht mir doch mein susses Kind, 

Fetter als ein fettes Schneckchen, 

Susser als ein Zuckerweckchen! 



Seht mir doch mein holdes Kind, 

Nicht zu mürrisch, nicht zu wählig 

Immer freundlich, immer fröhlich! 



Seht mir doch mein frommes Kind! 

Keine bitterbösen Sieben 

Würd ihr Mütterchen so lieben. 

Leutchen, mochtet ihr so eins? 

O, ihr kriegt gewiss nicht meins! 

Komm einmal ein Kaufmann her! 

Hunderttausend blanke Taler, 

Alles Gold der Erde zahl er! 

O, er kriegt gewiss nicht meins! 

Kauf er sich wo ander eins! 

Gottfried August Bürger (1747–94) 


Tantalising 

Just look at my lovely child 

with her thick golden ringlets, 

her blue eyes, red cheeks! 

Have you people got one like her? 

No, you people, you have not! 

Just look at my sweet child, 

plumper than a plump snail, 

sweeter than a sugar loaf! 



Just look at my darling child, 

not too moody, not too picksome! 

Always friendly, always happy! 



Just look at my good child! 

If she were a spiteful shrew, 

she wouldn’t love her mother so much. 

Would you people like one like her? 

Oh, you certainly won’t get mine! 

Just let a merchant come along! 

A hundred thousand shining guineas, 

all the gold on earth, he might pay! 

But he certainly won’t get mine! 

He can buy one somewhere else! 

Translation © William Mann 

2 Meinem Kinde 

Du schläfst und sachte neig’ ich mich, 

Über dein Bettchen und segne dich. 

Jeder behutsame Atemzug 

Ist ein schweifender Himmelsflug, 

Ist ein Suchen welt umher, 

Ob nicht dock ein Sternlein wär’, 

Wo aus eitel Glanz und Licht 

Liebe sich ein Glückskraut bricht, 

Das sie geflügelt hernieder trägt 

Und dir auf’s weisse Deckchen legs. 

Gustav Falke (1853–1916) 

3 Cäcilie 

Wenn du es wüsstest, 

Was träumen heisst von brennenden Küssen, 

Von Wandern und Ruhen mit der Geliebten, 

Aug’ in Auge, 

Und kosend und plaudernd, 


Du neigtest dein Herz! 


Was bangen heisst in einsamen Nächten, 

Umschauert vom Sturm, da niemant tröstet 

Milden Mundes die kampfmüde Seele, 


Du kämest zu mir. 


Was leben heisst, umhaucht von der Gottheit 

Weltschaffendem Atem, zu schweben empor, 

Lichtgetragen zu seligen Höhn, 


Du lebtest mit mir! 

Heinrich Hart (1855–1906) 

My Child 

You sleep and softly I bend down 

over your cot and bless you. 

Every cautious breath I breathe 

is a winged flight to heaven, 

is a quest far and wide 

to see if there is not a star 

from whose pure radiance and light 

Love could pluck a herb of grace, 

that she might carry down on her wing 

and lay upon your white coverlet. 

Translation © William Mann 

Cecilia 

If you but knew 

what it means to dream of ardent kisses, 

of walking and resting with the beloved, 

eye to eye, 

caressing and chatting. 

If you but knew, 

your heart would turn to me. 


what it means to long in lonely nights, 

amid the storm, with no kind words 

to console the battle-weary soul – 

if you but knew 

you would come to me. 


what it means to live, touched by 

the godhead’s world-creating breath, to soar aloft, 

borne up by the light to blessed heights – 

if you but knew, 

you would live with me. 

Translation by Gery Bramall 

© Decca Music Group Ltd. 

Text 

bbc.co.uk/now 

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16 


Richard Strauss 

Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, 

Op. 28 (1894–5) 

Till Eulenspiegel was the fifth of Strauss’s 

symphonic poems, though he called it something 

more complicated on the title-page: ‘Till 

Eulenspiegel’s merry pranks, after the old rogue’s 

tale – in rondo form – set for large orchestra’. The 

verbosity was perhaps inspired by the antics of 

the work’s early 14th-century hero, a notorious 

troublemaker who is supposed to have roamed 

around northern Germany, both literally and 

figuratively upsetting applecarts, then evading 

retribution by means of a subtle and ready 

tongue. Till Eulenspiegel (the surname means 

‘owl-mirror’, which might be a corruption of the 

French espièglerie – ‘mischief’ – or might simply 

be a bit of coarse Low German) is usually depicted 

in old prints as a jester with cap and bells but 

Strauss’s image is less homely, rougher, more 

alternative. History (or myth) relates that Till died 

of the Black Death, whereas Strauss has him 

summarily hanged. There is even a marked grave 

in the town of Mölln, near Lübeck: 

Disen Stein sol nieman erhaben 

Hie stat Ulenspiegel begraben. 

(Lifting this stone is illegal; 

here lies Eulenspiegel.) 

Strauss originally intended an opera on the 

subject but lost interest in the idea after the 

failure of his first opera, Guntram, in May 1894. 

Apart from disillusionment with the stage, he 

admitted to a difficulty fleshing out the main 

character, a problem which doesn’t necessarily 

arise in an orchestral work. In Till Eulenspiegel, as 

in Don Juan, the hero can be a fairly generalised 

concept alternating with situations which, by their 

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nature, are different until the main character 

intrudes on them and messes them up. As Liszt 

had shown in his symphonic poems, this is a 

handy device for the elaboration of a restricted 

amount of material. But, whereas Liszt tended to 

confine himself to a limited set of motifs, Strauss, 

like Wagner, knew how to invent graphic ideas 

that could be worked in well with the themes for 

his central character. And it’s his brilliance in this 

department that makes Till Eulenspiegel such a 

spectacular example of musical visualisation: a 

medieval woodcut turned into a Romantic 

tone-poem. 

The Till themes are easily noticed and tracked. 

The brief introduction supplies the first, on violins 

(‘Once upon a time …’), and the second follows 

at once on solo horn. These two themes are 

developed by Strauss throughout the piece in a 

bewildering variety of guises and with fantastic 

virtuosity. As for his hero’s escapades, Strauss 

never referenced them in print but did mark up his 

own score. At the end of the initial exposition, Till 

rides through the market, upsetting stalls and 

stallkeepers, then escapes dressed as a priest 

(slower theme on violas, clarinet and bassoons); 

next he falls in love (lyrical development of his 

own themes), is jilted, to his fury (sudden outburst 

of his horn theme, triple forte); then, in what 

amounts to the second rondo episode, engages in 

an increasingly confused debate with some 

learned professors (grumpy low woodwind). 

Eventually Till thumbs his nose at these pedants 

and nips away, whistling a merry tune. 

Strauss now moves into a recapitulation, starting 

again with the main horn solo, then elaborating 

the material in an ecstasy of miscreance until the 

inevitable happens: Till is caught, tried and 

condemned to death – music so Straussianly 

graphic that it needs no explanation. A brief 

Epilogue extends the ‘Once upon a time …’ into a 

‘they all lived happily ever after’ – including Till 

himself, whose spirit, the final bars prove, will 

never die. 

Programme note © Stephen Walsh 

Stephen Walsh is the author of a major two-volume 

biography of Stravinsky and holds a Chair in Music at 

Cardiff University. 


Dresden Staatskapelle/Rudolf Kempe 

(EMI 9187452) 

Interval: 20 minutes 

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) 

Symphony No. 5 in E flat major, 

Op. 82 (1915, rev. 1916, 1919) 

1 Tempo molto moderato – Allegro 

moderato (ma poco a poco stretto) – 

Presto – Più presto 

2 Andante mosso, quasi allegretto 

3 Allegro molto 

Throughout his working life, Sibelius kept diaries. 

For anyone interested in his music they are 

packed with revelations. The years 1914–15 – 

the period when Sibelius began making 

extensive sketches for the Fifth Symphony – 

are especially interesting. Sibelius writes about 

how he composes: 

Arrangement of the themes. This important 

task, which fascinates me in a mysterious way. 

It’s as if God the Father had thrown down the 

tiles of a mosaic from heaven’s floor and asked 

me to determine what kind of picture it was. 

And he reflects on the broader meaning of 

his symphonies: 

To me they are confessions of faith from the 

different periods of my life. And from this it 

follows that my symphonies are all 

so different. 

Then, in an entry dated 21 April 1915, Sibelius 

relates one of the new symphony’s themes to 

an event which stirred him to the core: 

Today at ten to eleven I saw 16 swans. One 

of my greatest experiences! Lord God, what 

beauty! They circled over me for a long time. 

Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming, 

bbc.co.uk/now 17

18 


silver ribbon. Their call the same woodwind 

type as that of cranes, but without tremolo. 

The swan-call closer to the trumpet … 

A low-pitched refrain reminiscent of a small 

child crying. Nature mysticism and life’s angst! 

The Fifth Symphony’s finale-theme: legato in 

the trumpets! 

It took Sibelius another four years of hard work 

(including two extensive revisions) to bring the 

Fifth Symphony to its final form. The musical 

tiles had to be moved around again and again 

before Sibelius was satisfied he could see the 

overall picture clearly. But one important feature 

is common to all three versions of the symphony. 

That finale theme – which Sibelius continued to 

refer to as his ‘Swan Hymn’ – doesn’t actually 

appear on the trumpets until near the end of the 

symphony, where it is marked nobile (‘noble’). 

It heralds the beginning of a long, arduous 

crescendo, clearly evoking ‘life’s angst’ in grinding 

dissonances and hard-edged orchestration. 

There are other passages in the Fifth Symphony 

where shadows fall across the music – the 

sombre, plaintive bassoon solo at the heart of 

the first movement (emerging through nervous, 

whispering string figures) is another point at 

which the music seems to look back to the pain 

and dark introspection of the Fourth Symphony 

(1910–11). Certainly the Fifth isn’t all solar 

glory. But that only makes the final triumphant 

emergence of the ‘Swan Hymn’ all the more 

convincing: the symphony has had to struggle 

to achieve it. 

A quiet, pregnant horn motif sets the first 

movement (Tempo molto moderato) on its 

course; this is the musical seed from which the 

music grows in two huge crescendo waves, each 

one topped by a blazing two-note trumpet- 

bbc.co.uk/now 

call. Then the splendour fades and we hear the 

long, plaintive bassoon solo mentioned above. 

For a while, the music seems to have lost its 

direction. In the symphony’s first version (1915) 

the movement petered out soon after this, to be 

followed by a faster scherzo. But then Sibelius 

was struck by a stunning new idea – why not 

make the scherzo emerge from the Tempo molto 

moderato? The result is one of the most gripping 

transitions in all symphonic music. It begins with 

another elemental crescendo; the original horn 

motif shines out on trumpets; then – almost 

imperceptibly at first – the tempo begins to 

quicken. It goes on getting faster and faster; 

by the time we arrive at the Più presto closing 

pages it’s hurtling forwards with tremendous 

energy – the nearest thing in music to a depiction 

of white-water rafting. It’s hard to believe that 

this apparently seamless organic process wasn’t 

conceived in a single inspiration – harder still 

to accept that it could have been achieved by 

moving around and exchanging musical ‘tiles’. 

At first, the next movement (Andante mosso, 

quasi allegretto) appears to offer a relaxing 

contrast. Broadly speaking, it is a set of free 

variations on a folk-like theme heard at the 

beginning (plucked strings and flutes). But things 

are going on under that seemingly calm surface, 

creating tensions which emerge in troubled 

string tremolos or in the brief but menacing brass 

crescendos towards the close. 

The tension is released as action in the finale 

(Allegro molto), which begins as a rapid airborne 

dance for high strings. This sweeps on into the 

first appearance of the ‘Swan Hymn’ (swinging 

horn figures and a chant-like melody for high 

woodwind – more bird-cries, perhaps). The 

whole process is repeated, but with telling 

variations: for example, the ‘Swan Hymn’ now 

appears in a different key, on woodwind and 

muted strings. Then the tempo drops and the 

mood becomes tense and expectant – until the 

‘Swan Hymn’ returns quietly but radiantly on 

trumpets, initiating the long final crescendo. For 

a moment, ‘life’s angst’ seems to prevail, but at 

last the first swinging phrase of the ‘Swan Hymn’ 

re-emerges in full orchestral splendour. The end is 

remarkable: six sledgehammer chords separated 

by long silences – the music seems to hold its 

breath; then, suddenly, almost brusquely, Sibelius 

brings the symphony to a close. 

Programme note by Stephen Johnson © BBC 



Sibelius was born in 1865, in the provincial 

Finnish town of Hämeenlinna (about 60 miles 

north of Helsinki), the son of an army doctor and 

his music-loving wife. His parents, like most 

educated Finns of the time, were Swedishspeakers. 

But 11-year-old ‘Janne’ went to a 

Finnish-speaking grammar school, where he 

learnt the language of most of his countrymen. 

As a child he dreamt of becoming a virtuoso 

violinist but during his student years in Helsinki he 

began to concentrate more on composing. He 

initially wrote chamber music, before two years 

of study in Berlin and Vienna (1889–91) 

dramatically revealed to him the potential of the 

orchestra. In 1892 Sibelius completed his 

five-movement choral symphony Kullervo, based 

on a text from the Kalevala, the Finnish national 

folk epic. Kullervo’s power and originality revealed 

an exceptional command of symphonic form 

combined with an uncanny ability to evoke the 

northern landscape. 

During the 1890s, ‘The Swan of Tuonela’ and 

‘Lemminkäinen’s Return’ (two movements from 

the four Lemminkäinen Legends, 1893–5) 

confirmed Sibelius’s reputation and began to 

make his name abroad. The first two symphonies 

were followed by a sequence of mature 

masterpieces, including a Third Symphony (1907) 

and the symphonic poems Pohjola’s Daughter 

(1905–6) and Night Ride and Sunrise (1908). 

Sibelius now began to travel widely, conducting 

his music to growing acclaim. 

The onset of suspected throat cancer in 1908, 

though successfully treated, brought about a darker 

mood that influenced the austere Fourth 

bbc.co.uk/now 19

20 


Symphony (1910–11). Marooned in Finland by the 

First World War, Sibelius completed the third and 

last version of his Fifth Symphony in 1919. After 

this came the Sixth (1923) and Seventh Symphonies 

(1924), a large score of incidental music for 

Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1925) and the 

symphonic poem Tapiola (1926). But then followed 

virtual silence, although he lived for another 30 

years. He wrote an Eighth Symphony, but later 

destroyed it. 

Sibelius’s magnitude as a symphonist tends to 

overshadow his mastery of other musical forms. 

His achievements in the realm of the symphonic 

poem were possibly even greater. He excelled, 

too, as a song and choral composer and in lighter 

musical genres, including music for the theatre. 

He composed Finlandia in 1899 to accompany a 

display of patriotic tableaux, at a time when his 

country’s desire to break free of Russian imperial 

domination had reached fever pitch. The work 

has remained Finland’s unofficial national anthem 

ever since. 

Profile by Malcolm Hayes © BBC 

Malcolm Hayes is a composer, writer, broadcaster 

and music journalist. He contributes regularly to 

‘BBC Music Magazine’ and recently completed a 

book on Liszt. He is currently working on a biography 

of Sibelius. 

bbc.co.uk/now 


Lahti Symphony Orchestra/Osmo Vänskä 

(BIS CD863) 

Sibelius Robert Layton (OUP) 

www.fimic.fi/sibelius 

Orchestra Merchandise 


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bbc.co.uk/now 21

Bjarke Johansen 

Biographies 

Thomas Søndergård 

conductor 

At the start of this season, 

Danish conductor Thomas 

Søndergård became Principal 

Conductor of BBC National 

Orchestra of Wales and 

Principal Guest Conductor of 

the Royal Scottish National 

Orchestra. He was Principal 

Conductor and Musical 

Advisor of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra from 2009 

to 2012. 

Highlights this season include debuts with the Seattle 

Symphony and Luxembourg Philharmonic orchestras, 

appearances at the Royal Danish Opera (Janá∂ek’s The 

Cunning Little Vixen) and the Royal Swedish Opera 

(Turandot), a European tour with the Junge Deutsche 

Philharmonie and returns to the Tivoli Festival and the 

Toulouse Capitole, Oslo Philharmonic and Stavanger 

Symphony orchestras. 

Highlights of recent seasons include debuts with the 

Brussels Philharmonic and BBC, Houston and 

Trondheim Symphony orchestras and return visits to the 

Rotterdam and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic 

orchestras, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Danish 

National and Swedish Radio Symphony orchestras and 

the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Ottawa. 

Admired for his interpretations of Scandinavian 

contemporary repertoire, his discography includes a 

number of symphonic scores. His recording of Sibelius 

and Prokofiev violin concertos with Vilde Frang was 

widely acclaimed. His most recent disc is of Poul 

Ruders’s Second Piano Concerto. 

Last year he was awarded the Foundation Prize by 

Queen Ingrid for services to Music in Denmark. 


Isak Hoffmeyer 

Inger Dam-Jensen 

soprano 

Danish soprano Inger 

Dam-Jensen first came to 

international attention when 

she won BBC Cardiff Singer of 

the World in 1993. She has 

since established herself as a 

leading performer in concert 

and on the operatic stage. 

Her core repertoire focuses on the Romantic period, 

ranging from Beethoven via Brahms to Mahler and 

Richard Strauss. She has performed with leading 

orchestras around the world, including the New York 

and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras, 

Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano 

Giuseppe Verdi, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin 

and the Danish National Radio, Malmö and Tivoli 

Symphony orchestras. Among the many notable 

conductors with whom she has worked are Christoph 

von Dohnányi, Sir Colin Davis, Xian Zhang, James 

Conlon, Edo de Waart, Thomas Dausgaard, Herbert 

Blomstedt, Jesús López-Cobos, Vladimir Ashkenazy, 

Ernest Martínez-Izquierdo, Claus Peter Flor, Bernard 

Haitink and Vassily Sinaisky. 

Her operatic repertoire encompasses Handel, Mozart, 

Berlioz, Puccini, Richard Strauss, Thomas, Donizetti, 

Verdi, Bellini, Wagner and Bizet and she has sung in the 

major houses of Europe, including for the Royal Opera, 

Covent Garden, Opéra de Paris, Geneva Opera and 

Royal Danish Opera. 

Inger Dam-Jensen’s discography includes Grieg’s Peer 

Gynt, Handel’s Solomon, Brahms’s A German Requiem 

and songs by Nielsen and Richard Strauss. 

BBC National 

Orchestra of Wales 

The BBC National Orchestra of Wales occupies a special 

role as both a national and broadcasting orchestra, 

acclaimed not only for the quality of its performances 

but also for its importance within its own community. 

The work of BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of 

Wales is supported by the Arts Council of Wales. 

In September Thomas Søndergård started in his post of 

Principal Conductor, for an initial term of four years. He 

joins the formidable conducting team of Principal Guest 

Conductor Jac van Steen, Associate Guest Conductor 

François-Xavier Roth and Conductor Laureate Tadaaki 

Otaka with whom the Orchestra has won considerable 

critical and audience acclaim over recent years. As well 

as an outstanding ability to refresh core repertoire, the 

Orchestra is proud of its adventurous programming and 

continuously demonstrates artistic excellence in new or 

rarely performed works. As part of this commitment to 

contemporary music, the Orchestra appointed Mark 

Bowden as Resident Composer in June 2011. 

It is Orchestra-in-Residence at St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 

and also presents a concert series at the Brangwyn Hall, 

Swansea. As well as international touring, it is in demand 

at major UK festivals and performs every year at the BBC 

Proms and biennially at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the 

World. Education and Community Outreach is also 

integral to its musical life and the department has been 

challenging conventions for nearly 15 years, taking the 

Orchestra’s work into schools, workplaces and 

communities. 

Based at its state-of-the-art recording and rehearsal 

venue in BBC Hoddinott Hall at Wales Millennium 

Centre, Cardiff Bay, the Orchestra broadcasts regularly 

for radio and television. Its discography includes Havergal 

Brian’s ‘Gothic’ Symphony and David Matthews’s Second 

and Sixth Symphonies, which won a 2011 BBC Music 

Magazine Award. 

Biographies 

bbc.co.uk/now 

23

24 

Orchestra list 

BBC National Orchestra of Wales 

Patron 

HRH The Prince of Wales kg kt pc gcb 

Principal Conductor 

Thomas Søndergård 

Principal Guest Conductor 

Jac van Steen 

Associate Guest Conductor 

François-Xavier Roth 

Conductor Laureate 

Tadaaki Otaka cbe 

Composer-in-Association 

Simon Holt 

Resident Composer 

Mark Bowden 

First Violins 

Lesley Hatfield 

Leader 

Nick Whiting 

Associate Leader 

Carl Darby # 

Gwenllian Hâf 

Richards 

Terry Porteus 

Suzanne Casey 

Richard Newington 

Paul Mann 

Gary George-Veale 

Robert Bird 

Carmel Barber 

Kerry Gordon-Smith 

Emilie Godden 

Anna Cleworth 

Elin Edwards 

Elizabeth Whittam 

Second Violins 

Naomi Thomas * 

Jane Sinclair # 

Ros Butler 

Sheila Smith 

Vickie Ringguth 

Joseph Williams 

Michael Topping 

Margot Leadbeater 

Katherine Miller 

Beverley Wescott 

Debbie Frost 

Nicolas White 

Roussanka 

Karatchivieva 

Jane West 

Violas 

Göran Fröst * 

Alex Thorndike # 

Martin Schaefer 

Peter Taylor 

David McKelvay 

Sarah Chapman 

James Drummond 

Ania Leadbeater 

Robert Gibbons 

Catherine Palmer 

Laura Sinnerton 

Charles Cross 

Cellos 

John Senter * 

Keith Hewitt # 

Hetty Snell 

Sandy Bartai 

Margaret Downie 

David Haime 

Carolyn Hewitt 

Kathryn Harris 

Sarah Bowler 

Jacqueline Phillips 

Double Basses 

David Stark ‡ 

David Ayre 

Christopher Wescott 

William 

Graham-White 

Richard Gibbons 

Tim Older 

Claire Whitson 

Neil Watson 

Flutes 

Matthew 

Featherstone † 

Eilidh Gillespie 

Elizabeth May 

Eva Stewart 

Piccolo 

Eva Stewart 

Oboes 

David Cowley * 

Amy McKean 

Gillian Taylor 

Sarah-Jayne 

Porsmoguer 

Cor anglais 

Sarah-Jayne 

Porsmoguer 

Clarinets 

Robert Plane * 

John Cooper 

Mark Simmons 

Bass Clarinet 

Lenny Sayers † 

Bassoons 

Jarosπaw 

Augustyniak * 

Martin Bowen 

Joanna Shewan 

David Buckland 

Contrabassoon 

David Buckland † 

Horns 

Tim Thorpe * 

Irene Williamson 

Ian Fisher † 

William Haskins 

Neil Shewan 

Trumpets 

Philippe Schartz * 

Adrian Williams 

Matthew Williams 

Trombones 

Donal Bannister * 

Andy Connington 

Bass Trombone 

Darren Smith † 

Tuba 

Daniel Trodden † 

Timpani 

Steve Barnard * 

Percussion 

Chris Stock * 

Mark Walker † 

Harp 

Valerie 

Aldrich-Smith † 

* Section Principal 

† Principal 

‡ Guest Principal 

# Assistant Principal 

Director 

David Murray 

Orchestra Manager 

Byron Jenkins 

Assistant to Director 

and Orchestra 

Manager 

Bethan Everton 

Assistant Orchestra 

Manager 

Charlotte Sandford 

Orchestral 

Coordinator 

Andy Farquharson 

Music Librarian 

Christopher Painter 

Stage Manager 

Andrew Smith 

Transport Manager 

Mark Terrell 

Senior Producer 

Tim Thorne 

Programme produced by BBC Proms Publications. Welsh translation by Annes Gruffydd. 

bbc.co.uk/now 

Artists and Concerts 

Administrator 

Victoria Massocchi 

Broadcast Assistant 

Callum Thomson 

Marketing Manager 

Sarah Horner 

Assistant Marketing 

Manager 

Jodi Bennett 

Communications 

Officer 

David Hopkins 

Marketing and 

Publicity Assistant 

Anwen Locke 

Audience Line 

Operators 

Nerys Lloyd-Evans 

Margarita Felices 

Phillippa Scammell 

Education and 

Community Manager 

Suzanne Hay 

Education and 

Community 

Assistant 

Andy Everton 

Chorus Manager 

Osian Rowlands 

Senior Audio 

Supervisor 

Huw Thomas 

Business and Finance 

Manager 

Chris Rogers

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