Gregynog Festival - Benjamin Britten Centenary

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Gregynog Festival is staging two Cardiff performances to mark Benjamin Britten’s Centenary on Friday, 22 November 2013. Welsh superstar, Llÿr Williams, gives a Gala Centenary Recital at the Reardon Smith Theatre in Cardiff and soprano Jennifer Walker and harpist Bethan Semmens perform on the Glanfa Stage at Wales Millennium Centre.

Llÿr Williams - Gala Centenary Recital, Reardon Smith TheatreNational Museum Cardiff at 7.30pm. Tickets £10 (young people) and £20

Welsh pianist Llÿr Williams gives a Gala Centenary Recital at the Reardon Smith Theatre at the National Museum Cardiff, to celebrate Benjamin Britten's Centenary on 22 November

Britten wrote comparatively few piano pieces - Llÿr will play two of them – Holiday Diary (Opus 5) which the composer described as “a schoolboy’s impressions of a pre-war seaside holiday” and Night Piece (Notturno) which was written for the 1963 Leeds International Piano Competition.

Llÿr has chosen music by other composers whom Britten valued very highly - Haydn’s Sonata in C major, the monumental Sonata by his teacher Frank Bridge, and Schubert’s Fantasy in C major, the ‘Wanderer-Fantasie’. The latter works was the composer’s most demanding piano work - he said himself, “The devil may play it”, referring to his own inability to do so.
Glanfa Stage, Wales Millennium Centre – 1pm. Free.

Soprano Jennifer Walker and harpist Bethan Semmens present a lunchtime recital of music by Benjamin Britten and his contemporaries on the Glanfa Stage in Wales Millennium Centre.
Jennifer studied singing at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama where she was a scholar and major prize-winner. She has performed with Welsh National Youth Opera, broadcast for BBC Radio 3 and performed at Buxton Festival. Harpist Bethan Semmens is studying for her Masters in Performance degree at the Royal College of Music in London. A former member of the National Youth Orchestra of Wales, Bethan’s studies and awards have also taken her to the Welsh College of Music and Drama and the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg.