Winning ways

Wild Wales; Land of Song; Green Valleys: the clichés cluster. The Vale of Glamorgan Festival fulfils most if not all, in a wholly uncliché’d way. Subtitled ‘a celebration of living composers’, it could be forbiddingly severe, courting box-office disaster. But its chosen living composers are far removed from the erstwhile compulsory rebarberation, wilfully inaccessible to all but the chosen few; and its venues are mainly modest, ensuring full attendance without dispiriting areas of empty seats. Audiences are keen, loyal, manifestly satisfied, indeed delighted, with what they’ve come for, however unfamiliar, without its needing palliation by Trout Quintets and other such standards.

Venues modest: but only in size and resource. The concert with the première of a new piece of mine took place in the darkly evocative Old Priory Church at Ewenny. Whether or not this building is dedicated to a St Ewenny, I couldn’t determine. For sure it is a striking edifice, ancient and austere, unforgiving in chunkiness and denial of ornament, yet it is so harmonious in its rounded vaulting and cool spaces that the spirit is pacified, not starved.