There is already a great deal of interest from music lovers across Majorca for the Bridgend Male Choir’s forthcoming tour of the island next week.
Following on from their recent concert successes back home in Wales, the choir will perform a varied programme of American spirituals, songs from musical theatre and of course, a selection of great Welsh hymns, including Gwahoddiad and Llanfair.
The choir’s tour begins at the Cap Vermell Cultural Centre in Cala Ratjada at 7.30pm on Wednesday, 25 October and moves on to the Hotel Zafiro Rey Don Jaime in Santa Ponsa on Thursday, 26 October (9.30pm), before coming to a fitting end in the wonderful surroundings of Palma Cathedral at 8.00pm on Friday evening, 27 October. Here, the 80-strong choir will be joined by soloist, Scott Williams, who will play the cathedral’s magnificent baroque organ for the first time in his career.
He sees it as a great privilege to be able to play the organ at Palma Cathedral and it will be the first cathedral organ he will have played outside Britain and Ireland, so he is very much looking forward to the experience. He is unlikely to be able to practise on the organ until a couple of hours before the concert, for which he has two organ solos as well as accompanying the choir.
His first experience of playing any organ outside of the UK was at the equally impressive St. Mary’s Basilica in Krakow, Poland as guest organist with Pendyrus Male Choir only two months ago. "The first notes I played on that instrument were the very first notes of the concert."
Before every choir concert, Scott has to do some homework on the organ itself - the organ stops are naturally labelled in Spanish, so he has spent some time translating these into their English equivalents, which he had to do when he played in Krakow. The characteristic of the organ Scott is most looking forward to hearing is the effect of the horizontal trumpets that will actually be projecting out not too far above his head.
These ‘battle trumpets’ are typical of Spanish organs and used frequently in Spanish organ music and he has one or two ideas for where the battle trumpets may sound effective during the concert. "I shall likely try them out at the rehearsal."
What he is really looking forward to is hearing how the choir and organ sound together, especially during the Welsh hymns after their rousing Amens, the combined sound fading away into the distance in the Cathedral’s reverberant acoustics.
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