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‘Bryn Terfel  at Christmas’:  Bryn Terfel (bar) and supporting artists, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/ Gareth Jones St David’s Hall, Cardiff 4.12.2008 (MS)

Bryn Terfel’s year away from performing opera is coming to an end and a festive flourish was quite the thing to mark another stage in the great artist’s career.

Already patron of a variety of organisations and with his own’Urdd’  scholarships, Bryn chose the concert to launch his own Foundation to support artists who are so often weighed down with debts when they finish their studies.

Almost 20 years after winning what is now the Song Prize in BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, which again takes place on this very stage  in June 2009, how apt it was at the venue that gave his career such a boost that Bryn should launch his Foundation.

Not that a huge number of the audience who had paid for their tickets probably cared too much about this. They had come to hear Bryn and with the added novelty attracation of the TV choir competition winners Only Med Aloud! also on the programme.

The concert was with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Gareth Jones who has been working with Bryn on a series of such performances during this operatic gap year. Similarly some of the programme in the first half is what Bryn has been delighting audiences with far and wide. So after a rousing Nabucco Overture we had Iago’s Credo from Verdi Otello, Ehi Paggio from Falstaff and Te Deum from Puccini’s Tosca.

Falstaff is of course now a main stay of Bryn’s repertoire, Scarpia in Tosca is coming up again for him at Covent Garden but Iago? Maybe a new stage role? Yes, Bryn sound wonderful as ever and his acting on the concert stage is as, if not actually, more impressive than in the fully stages operas. In the Tosca, for example, we not only having the sneering, evil chief of police but in the final seconds of the aria rather than, conventionally, acknowledging God’s authority he dismisses it.

West End singer John Owen-Jones brought the distinctive show tune style of singing to the evening with a batch of popular   umbers such as Bring Him Home from Les Miserables and a rousing rendition of Thunderball, a rather forgotten Bond theme song sung by Tom Jones. I was pleased to hear a strong voice stripped of some of the West End flourishes when he joined Bryn to sing Panis Angelicus.

Cardiff-based Serendipity sang Oklahoma (for some reason) and the break-out Only Men Aloud! were charming and came into their jolly own during the second half of the evening that snow ploughed into the festive season with all manner of Christmas classics. So we had The Lord is My Shepherd (think Vicar of Dibly), Mary’s Boy Child (think calypso) and the pretty Austrian song Still, Still, Still and When a Child is Born.

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