The Welsh Rostrum: Owain Arwel Hughes and Welsh orchestral music
Owain Arwel Hughes: the career, and the music around it
Owain Arwel Hughes CBE is a Welsh orchestral conductor, born in 1942, who founded the Welsh Proms in 1986 and has directed it since, held posts with the Philharmonia, the Royal Philharmonic, the BBC Welsh Orchestra, the Huddersfield Choral Society, the Aalborg Symphony and the Cape Town Philharmonic, and recorded the complete symphonies of Vagn Holmboe for BIS.
The running order
- 1The working life, in orderfrom 1942
- 2Boult, Haitink and KempeCardiff, London
- 3The London orchestrasfrom 1968
- 4Huddersfield Choral Society1980 to 1986
- 5The Welsh Proms, foundedfrom 1986
Interval
- 6Denmark and the Holmboe cycle1989 to 1999
- 7Cape Town, and Schnittke2006
- 8Camerata Wales and the NYOW2003, 2005
- 9The recordingsfrom 1992
This site is a reference on that career and on the musical country it belongs to. The running order on the left is the career, set out as a programme sets an evening: the British posts first, then the interval, then the Danish and South African years, the two ensembles and the recordings. Everything on the right is the world around it: what a conductor actually does, how an orchestra is put together, the Welsh composers and institutions, the repertoire, and the two halls in Cardiff where most of it took place.
Nothing here is drawn from private life. Every biographical statement comes from the public record and is sourced.
The rest of the programme
- ConductingWhat conducting is, and what it is for
- The orchestraHow a symphony orchestra is put together
- Welsh classical musicThe composers, the choirs and the institutions
- The repertoireThe pieces that keep coming back, and why
- Concert venues in Cardiff: the hallsThe concert halls of south Wales
