After completing a degree at Cardiff University, you set up the orchestra in 1982 to continue performing the music you had studied. You must be pinching yourself that the orchestra is still here 40 years and almost 400 concerts later!

 Absolutely! There was  no opportunity to conduct after leaving university so I formed an orchestra and called it Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra. I thought there would be one concert…and then after the success of the concert I thought…perhaps we’ll do one more…which has now become almost 400 one more times!

CPO will be celebrating this landmark with a special concert at St David’s Hall on Friday 24th June. What have you got in store for us?

We’ll begin by performing a brilliant piece of music by Welsh composer Gareth Wood, his Cardiff Bay Overture which portrays the sights and sounds, the industrial and cultural heritage of Cardiff Bay, or Tiger Bay, in its heyday as one of the world’s most important ports.  This is followed by Gershwin’s jazzy and endlessly tuneful Piano Concerto. We have a fantastic young soloist, 22 year old Italian pianist Gabriele Strata who has stepped in at short notice after our original soloist withdrew because of illness.  

The programme concludes with the most heartfelt and romantic symphonies of all, the Symphony No. 2 by the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov, a work that the orchestra loves playing.

The orchestra started performing at St David’s Hall in 1983 where it continues to perform four concerts per season. It must feel like a second home to you!

 CPO first performed at St David’s Hall in December 1983 as part of a charity concert sharing the programme with other performers including a very distinguished oboe player named Nicholas Daniel, who had won the 1980 BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition. At this concert our timpanist fell ill and had to go home in the interval. Luckily, Nicholas Daniel had played timpani at some point in his life and stepped in to save the day!

It is like a second home particularly as I worked for three happy years at St David’s Hall from 1987 to 1990.

Over the last 40 years, CPO have been joined by a huge array of special guests including Michael Sheen, Sir Bryn Terfel, Charlotte Church, Bonnie Tyler, Sir Karl Jenkins and even the likes of Neil Kinnock, Brian Blessed and Sebastian Coe. It must give you an enormous feeling of pride that such big names want to perform with the orchestra?

 When you work with people famous from the television and in other public spheres there is always a tremendous anticipation...what will they be like...will they be divas...but everyone with whom we’ve worked, without exception has been a joy.

What are your memories of these collaborations?

 We’ve been fortunate to perform with a wide range of distinguished soloists and presenters including the young Bryn Terfel (who rehearsed with us at Dalton Street Day Centre!) and the legendary Sir Geraint Evans; Neil Kinnock narrated Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds; Brian Blessed was a force of nature in Peter and the Wolf. I amended the script for him, naming the duck Gordon, so Brian could end the piece by bellowing his famous line “Gordon’s Alive!” Michael Sheen was our most recent distinguished guest in the World Premiere in October 2016 of Mr Dahl.

As a big film fan yourself, it must be good fun performing such iconic music from the movies and sharing all the related facts and figures with the audience?

 I’ve always loved from music from films, and would be one of the sad people who sit right to the end of the film credits in the cinema to find out either who wrote the music, or who arranged or orchestrated the music, and also who performed the music. We started A Night at the Movies in 1994. Initially I wrote to Barry Norman to engage him to come and introduce the concert. When he sent me a very nice reply, but declining, I thought I’d give it a go myself, so have been introducing the concerts to audiences ever since. With the advent of the internet it became much easier to find facts, figures, and trivia (!) than having to buy a succession of movie guides and reference books.

The first film score that made a real impact on me was that of Miklós Rósza’s score for Ben-Hur (the film always seemed to be on at Christmas on one of the three channels then available!) We’ve performed music from Ben-Hur on several occasions (and recorded it too) and I enjoy it immensely every time.

Since 2000, CPO has also performed the Family Prom at every year of the Welsh Proms. How important are concerts like these in introducing people to classical music from an early age?

 I remember the thrill of hearing a live orchestra for the first time when I was in school, and a group of us were taken to a concert at Swansea’s Brangwyn Hall. And after that I just wanted to keep going to concerts, and I did, and I hope that we can provide the same experience for our young audience at the Family Prom.

 What can we expect from this year’s Family Prom on Sunday 10th July at St David’s Hall?

The theme of this years Family Prom is Animals! We’re performing pieces ranging from Elgar’s Wild Bears, a selection from The Lion King and the theme by John Williams to Jurassic Park. We’ll also perform one of the most beloved works written to introduce young people to an orchestra, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.

CPO has always prided itself on delivering diverse and exciting repertoires. What pieces do you love performing? Conversely, are there any that are a bit of a nightmare to play?

 I think that the fact we have always played a diverse range of music – from symphonies by Mahler, Bruckner and Shostakovich on the one hand to music by Eric Coates and Arthur Sullivan on the other – is testament to the commitment of the players and the wish to play a wide variety of styles. There is no such thing as easy music. Everything requires dedication and care to give as good a performance as possible.

The orchestra has a loyal following that continues to return to your concerts year on year. It must be great seeing so many familiar faces and newcomers each season?

 We are very lucky and we see familiar faces in our audiences time after time at our concerts. Many are friends and family members who require our particular thanks for understanding that Friday Night is CPO rehearsal night! New audience members are always welcome though and we hope that members of our audience who come to see a particular genre like film music will also give a chance for some of our more challenging repertoires.

I remember when we performed Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony in 2008, which was an incredible experience for the orchestra and our large choir that raised the roof of St David’s Hall in the final movement.

One lady in the chorus told me subsequently that she had dragged along her 16-year-old son to the concert. Not only had he not heard Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony previously, he’d never been to any orchestral concert and knew nothing about classical music. Rock and Heavy Metal was all he knew.

After the performance, with great trepidation, his mum asked her son what he had thought of the concert, to which he replied just one word…..”Awesome!”