Though modest in scope, the Vale of Glamorgan festival invariably has its own distinct flavour. Artistic director John Metcalf's commitment to making new music accessible invariably informs his choice of featured composers, who this year were Ross Edwards, Giya Kancheli, Howard Skempton, John Tavener and Ivan Moody.
The first three of those were represented in the BBC National Orchestra of Wales's concert. Premieres from Skempton and Kancheli were juxtaposed with two works by the Australian Edwards that left a rather mixed impression. The first, the overture-like White Ghost Dancing, could almost be categorised as light music, while Edwards's oboe concerto Bird Spirit Dreaming, with the BBC NOW's principal David Cowley tackling the ferociously demanding solo part, was more interestingly eclectic, with sound evocations of Australian nature alongside references to a variety of European traditions.
Skempton's The Moon Is Flashing was the festival's big commission, a series of three songs with orchestra written for the tenor James Gilchrist. It uses poems that, in typical Skempton fashion, seem to have no overarching coherence, yet still hang together convincingly, as they move from the personal and sentimental, to the vividly descriptive in a final setting of DH Lawrence's Snake. Skempton's practically continuous vocal lines (where Gilchrist managed to breath I can't imagine) and wave-like tessitura create an almost hypnotic effect.
Kancheli's Kapote for accordion and orchestra, a UK premiere, was hypnotic, too, but only because of stunned amazement at its sheer awfulness. Banal tunes for the accordion over slushy strings that so easily could have come from a French 1960s B-movie (you expected the soloist Andreas Borregaard to be wearing a beret and smoking a Gauloise) were occasionally interrupted by rhythmic menaces in the orchestra. It was shapeless and pointless and, at over 30 minutes, absurdly extended. Kancheli's programme note talked of "making the fundament visible"; this piece just disappeared up it.
· To be broadcast on BBC Radio 3's Hear and Now on September 22
