Highlight of the Week

Full house wowed at St Cecilia’s Concert

The St Cecilia’s Concert, featuring 170 pupils, once again wowed the audience at the Wales Millennium Centre. 

Senior Orchestra, numbering over 50 players, provided a confident and expressive delivery of the Downton Abbey signature music, together with an extended orchestral medley of period songs from the First World War era. Senior String and Percussion Ensembles joined forces for the first time in a special arrangement of Dr Who themes; the sonic and visual effect was most exciting. Following an enjoyable trio of arrangements played by our intermediate orchestra, Sinfonia, in which the young string section was a particular highlight this year, the audience enjoyed vibrant performances from Brass Ensemble and Jazz Band, this year enjoying collaboration with RWCMD Symphonic Brass – most impressively in a divided-choir performance of Gabrieli’s ‘Canzon 28’. Jazz Band concluded the first half with Chuck Rio’s ‘Tequila’, enlisting enthusiastic interaction from the audience!

The second half featured Cathedral School choral music at its finest. Beautiful performances by the Boy Choristers, Choral Scholars and Cantemus were balanced by a really lovely combination of Senior flautists and harp, rendering Fauré’s ‘Pavane’ most expressively. Without doubt, the climax of the concert was our large-scale performance of John Rutter’s ‘Gloria’, composed exactly 40 years ago in 1974. Significantly, the Senior Chamber Choir reached unprecedented proportions of over 90 singers, providing quite a stunning visual backdrop to the RWCMD Symphonic Brass ensemble which – together with organ – provided Rutter’s vibrant instrumental accompaniment. Senior Chamber Choir excelled themselves and certainly rose to the challenge bringing the concert to an impressive end.