Camerata Wales and the National Youth Orchestra of Wales
Two ensembles, one founded and one inherited
WHAT THIS IS
Camerata Wales and the National Youth Orchestra of Wales
FOUNDED
Camerata Wales 2005; National Youth Orchestra of Wales 1945
IN THIS PROGRAMME
SOURCES
Public record only. The biographical facts are sourced; see About.
The National Youth Orchestra of Wales, founded in 1945, was the first national youth orchestra in the world, and Owain Arwel Hughes was its music director from 2003 to 2010. Wales built a model that has since been copied almost everywhere: a country-wide audition round, a residential course, and concerts at the end of it.
Alongside that inherited institution sits one he made himself. Camerata Wales, founded in 2005, is a chamber orchestra formed from Welsh musicians, with Hughes as its music director. The pair show the two ways a conductor acquires an ensemble: by appointment to something that already exists, and by convening something that did not.
The National Youth Orchestra of Wales, and the 1945 precedent
The National Youth Orchestra of Wales was founded in 1945, before any other country had a national youth orchestra, and the timing is the interesting part. It was set up in the last year of the Second World War, in a country whose musical institutions were then strong on the choral side and thin on the orchestral one. The chapel and choral society tradition was deep, and the National Eisteddfod of Wales had run annually in its modern form since 1861, but a young instrumentalist had far fewer routes forward than a young singer. A national orchestra of school-age players answered that gap directly.
What a national youth orchestra does is not what an amateur orchestra does. Membership is not open, it is won and it is temporary. Players age out, so the whole body turns over every few years and the orchestra rebuilds its standard from a standing start more often than any professional ensemble.
How a player gets in: the audition
To get in, a player auditions, and the audition round is the fixed annual event around which everything else in a youth orchestra's year is arranged. The pattern is broadly the same wherever it is run:
- Apply by the published closing date, naming the instrument and, where relevant, a second study.
- Prepare set requirements, usually a solo piece of a stated difficulty, scales and arpeggios, and sight-reading.
- Play to a panel, which for orchestral instruments normally includes the section's professional tutor.
- Take orchestral excerpts, if the panel wants to hear how a candidate handles the specific passages the season's repertoire will demand.
- Wait for results, issued once the whole round is complete, because places are allocated by section rather than one at a time.
That mechanism explains a lot of apparently harsh outcomes. A first violin section needs 14 to 16 players; a tuba section needs one. A fine tuba player and a fine violinist compete in completely different markets, and a candidate can play well and not be offered a place because the section is full.
The residential course and the tour
The residential course is where the orchestra actually becomes an orchestra. Members live on site for a concentrated period, working through a daily pattern of sectional rehearsals with professional tutors and full rehearsals with the conductor. A professional orchestra prepares a standard programme in about three to four rehearsals of three hours, and much less on tour. A youth orchestra has no such shorthand and does not want one: the course exists precisely so that the preparation is slow enough to teach something.
The tour is the point of it. A course that ended in a play-through would teach the notes and nothing about performance, so the work is aimed at concerts, starting in home venues such as St David's Hall in Cardiff and then travelling. Touring adds conditions a young player cannot rehearse: an unfamiliar acoustic every night, an early coach call, and the discipline of repeating a programme without letting it go stale. Alumni networks and friends organisations grow up around these orchestras because the course is short, intense and shared, and people who have done it stay attached.
Camerata Wales, founded in 2005
Camerata Wales was founded in 2005, is formed from Welsh musicians, and has Hughes as its music director. Founding an ensemble is a different act from being appointed to one. There is no constitution to inherit, no audition machinery already turning and no season already in the diary, so the size of the string body, the pattern of work and the first programme are all decisions taken from nothing.
A chamber orchestra is the practical scale at which that can be done. Fifteen to 45 players can be assembled for a specific set of concerts, can rehearse in rooms a full symphony orchestra cannot use, and can play the repertoire from Bach through Haydn and Mozart to early Beethoven without ever calling for the forces Mahler or Strauss demand.
Chamber orchestra or symphony orchestra
A chamber orchestra differs from a symphony orchestra in size first, and everything else follows from size.
| Feature | Chamber orchestra | Symphony orchestra |
|---|---|---|
| Players | Roughly 15 to 45 | Roughly 80 to 100 |
| Strings | A small body, often with 6 to 8 first violins | About two thirds of the orchestra, with 14 to 16 first violins |
| Wind and brass | Usually in pairs, sometimes single | Full sections, with extras as the score asks |
| Percussion | Timpani, and little else as a rule | A full percussion section, plus harp and keyboard where required |
| Core repertoire | Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, early Beethoven, and twentieth-century string writing such as Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis | Beethoven onward: Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, Holst's The Planets and the Elgar of the Enigma Variations |
| Direction | Sometimes led from the leader's chair or the keyboard, with no conductor | Always conducted |
| Rehearsal | Detail is audible, so intonation and ensemble are exposed | Balance and blend dominate, and the conductor's job is largely one of proportion |
| Halls | Churches and rooms of a few hundred | Halls of 1,500 to 2,500, such as the 2,000 seats of St David's Hall |
The exposure point is the one players talk about: in a section of 16 violins a single imperfect note is absorbed, and in a section of six it is a solo.
The two ensembles side by side
| Feature | Camerata Wales | National Youth Orchestra of Wales |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2005 | 1945 |
| Standing | A chamber orchestra formed from Welsh musicians | The first national youth orchestra in the world |
| Hughes's role | Founder and music director | Music director, 2003 to 2010 |
| Membership | Professional players, convened by project | Young players, admitted by annual audition and turning over as they age out |
| Pattern of work | Concerts assembled around the players' other commitments | An audition round, a residential course and a run of concerts |
| What it required of him | Founding an ensemble that did not previously exist | Taking artistic charge of an institution older than his own career |
The two jobs pull in opposite directions, which is what makes the pairing informative. A youth orchestra is rebuilt from nothing every year and its purpose is partly educational, so the conductor's work is measured in what the players can do at the end of the course that they could not do at the start. A chamber orchestra of professionals is measured entirely in the concert. Hughes did both at once from 2005, when Camerata Wales was founded, until the youth orchestra post ended in 2010.
Also in this programme
- Owain Arwel Hughes, conductor: the working life in orderA biography of the working life
- The London orchestrasPhilharmonia and the Royal Philharmonic
- Boult, Haitink and Kempe: how a conductor was trainedThe teachers: Boult, Haitink and Kempe
- St David's HallThe national concert hall of Wales