Grace, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s new concert series, is named for its focus on one of the Wales’s foremost composers, Grace Williams, whose substantial output is only recently beginning to be properly appreciated. Her Second Symphony, written in 1956 and performed here in her 1975 revision, is energised and belies the depression that beset her for much of her life, brought on by the feeling that, as a woman, she was treated as a second-class composer. As though to prove the point, the BBC Radio 3 broadcast’s interval extract of her opera The Parlour was mis-credited on its website to Geoffrey Williams.
The commitment the orchestra and conductor Martyn Brabbins brought to the symphony was notable: the first movement’s brass writing – trumpet almost a signature instrument for Williams – bold and direct, the militaristic overtones implied in its Allegro Marziale resonating all too clearly in these warring times. Even in the slow movement with Steve Hudson’s haunting oboe solo, an underlying unease lingered. Yet nothing showed Williams’ command of her medium as comprehensively as the finale with its deeply expressive Largo growing into an even more emotionally charged soundscape, its ending emphatic and defiant.
