History

HISTORY OF THE ORCHESTRA

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Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra, founded by conductor Michael Bell, performed its inaugural concert at St David’s Cathedral, Cardiff on June 19th 1982 for what was meant to have been a single charity concert. Thirty-eight years and over 350 concerts later, CPO continues to flourish and is widely recognised as one of Wales’ foremost non-professional orchestras with a wide ranging repertoire from major classics to film music and light classics. A full list of the orchestra's repertoire is available HERE .

Notable works performed by CPO include Mahler's Symphonies 1,2,3,5, & 6. The monumental Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’ was performed in June 2008 with an orchestra of 116, a chorus of 250 including singers from Brittany and Paris, and soloists Ros Evans (Soprano) and Kate Woolveridge (Mezzo Soprano). Other works performed include all four of Brahms’s symphonies; Saint-Saëns' ‘Organ Symphony’; Richard Strauss’ An Alpine Symphony, Don Juan and the Festival Prelude for Organ and Orchestra (soloist Jeffrey Howard): Elgar’s Symphonies 1 & 2; Bruckner’s Symphonies 4 & 8; Rachmaninoff’s Symphonies 2 & 3; Shostakovich’s Symphonies 5 & 7 ‘Leningrad’; Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony (in its rarely heard 1920 version) and Fifth Symphony; Stravinsky’s ballets Petrushka and The Rite of Spring.


CPO performed the Welsh premieres of Sir Arthur Bliss’s ballet Checkmate and film score Things to Come. Works performed by Welsh composers include music by Alun Hoddinott, William Mathias, Grace Williams and Gareth Wood. 

 In October 2013 CPO performed the UK Premiere of The Ring Without Words, music from Wagner’s epic Ring cycle compiled in a single gigantic narrative by Lorin Maazel.


Overseas tours include a three-concert tour of Switzerland in 1996, followed by a tour of France in 1998 that culminated in a concert in Paris’ premier concert venue, the Salle Pleyel. After the success of this tour, CPO was invited back to Paris to perform the final concert of the British Millennium Festival in the historic Église de la Madeleine (where Saint-Saëns and Fauré were Directors of Music; where Franz Liszt performed a recital, and where Fauré’s Requiem was first performed). In 2007 the orchestra performed two concerts in Cardiff’s twin city, Nantes.

In December 1983 Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra became the first non-professional orchestra to perform at St David’s Hall, Cardiff.

CPO performs an annual series of concerts at the hall, as well as performances in the Welsh Proms. 

Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra has performed the popular ‘Family Prom’ since 2000 alongside guest presenters including Brian Blessed, Dave Benson Phillips, Aled Jones, Zoe Salmon, Barney Harwood, Wynne Evans, Mike Doyle, Connie Fisher, Josie D’Arby and BBC weather presenters Derek Brockway and Behnaz Akhgar.

In addition to St David’s Hall, CPO has performed at Swansea’s Brangwyn Hall, Neath’s Gwyn Hall, Brecon’s Theatr Brycheiniog, and annually at Blackwood Miners’ Institute. CPO’s performances at the 500 seater Follies Theatre at Folly Farm in Pembrokeshire have helped raise tens of thousands of pounds for a number of good causes. 

Soloists who have appeared with CPO include Sir Geraint Evans, Sir Bryn Terfel, Kate Woolveridge, Wynne Evans, Charlotte Church and Bonnie Tyler; pianists include Martin Jones, Richard McMahon, Alexander Ullman and Giuseppe Guarrera; cellists Paul Watkins and Steffan Morris, and violinists Rakhi Singh, Sara Trickey and Benjamin Baker.

 In October 2017 the orchestra was joined by pianist Martin James Bartlett (BBC Young Musician 2014) for a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 that was greeted with a standing ovation from the audience at St David’s Hall.

In 2006 Welsh Composer Sir Karl Jenkins conducted CPO in a performance of his hugely successful ‘The Armed Man’ in the orchestra’s debut appearance at the Wales Millennium Centre. In October 2016 CPO was joined by renowned Welsh actor Michael Sheen, at St David’s Hall, in the world premiere of Bernard Kane’s Mr Dahl, as part of the city’s Roald Dahl’s centenary celebrations.In 1994 Neil Kinnock joined CPO as the narrator for a sellout performance of Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds.

A Night at the Movies logo

 In the same year CPO introduced evenings of film music to its annual series of concerts. A Night at the Movies has since been performed in venues throughout South Wales and included countless Welsh Premieres, ranging from Max Steiner’s score for King Kong (1933) to John Williams’s score for Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and many, many more besides. 

Broadcasts include televised concerts from the Welsh Proms, Texaco Young Musician of Wales and an ITV Wales documentary that recorded the orchestra’s tour to France in 1998. CPO has also been broadcast as part of BBC Radio 3’s Listen-Up Festivals.

Michael Bell has conducted almost all of CPO’s 350 concerts. Other conductors with whom the orchestra has performed include Sir Karl Jenkins, Gareth Jones, Tianyi Lu and John Quirk for two evenings of Classic Elvis.
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