IT’S AN AWE-INSPIRING business witnessing one of Britain’s premier orchestras recording a major new work by a living composer. But there I was last week in Cardiff, at the BBC’s HQ adjacent to the Millennium Centre, with a select audience of five people, watching the 75-member BBC National Orchestra of Wales record Adrian William’s magisterial and profoundly moving new Cello Concerto ahead of its first public performance at the Bangor New Music Festival later this week. The soloist is Raphael Wallfisch and conductor  is Grant Llwellyn.
Adrian was once described by Yehudi Menuhin as a “master of intricate patterns and forms”. His astonishing talent and quality was recognized early at the Royal College of Music. While studying there he received recognition for his first mature orchestral work, the gritty and ambitious Symphonic Studies, an achievement acknowledged by the RCM director Sir David Willcocks. More recently (2007) he wrote the music for BBC TV’s series about China’s Terracotta Army and a year later the hauntingly beautiful accompaniment to the BBC’s film Trouble in Amish Paradise.
Now his Cello Concerto (2009) marks the culmination of Adrian Williams’ long standing relationship with cello soloist Raphael Wallfisch, an ardent champion of his work. You can get a feel for the power and range of his work at http://www.adrianwilliamsmusic.com

Naturally, to an unmusical novelist like me, who can just about plod through Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star on a piano, and never did get to grips with notation, an invitation to a major recording was something special.
Don’t go in if the red light’s on I was warned. It wasn’t on when I arrived but even so I lingered outside the huge studio, peering through the little windows in the doors, wondering how to get in without being noticed. Orchestras in rehearsal don’t like gawping onlookers for a lot of very good reasons, one of them being that they  start coughing when they shouldn’t, and another, apparently the  ultimate sin: leaving  mobiles on…
Luckily for me there was a traffic jam in Cardiff so several members of the orchestra arrived a few minutes late, including a player of one of the six, repeat six, double basses used in the piece. I hid myself within the shadow of his vast instrument and made my way more or less unseen to the tiered seats to listen and watch.
In addition to the red light outside there were two within, on either side of the orchestra, so that no-one is in doubt when recording is happening. When that light goes on silence reigns and the magic of live performance happens.
Except that in a recording, it seems, you rarely get to hear the whole piece, just bits as each section is recorded to the satisfaction of the producer and composer before moving on to another bit. I saw neither during the playing, just heard their disembodied voices from some other place making comments and  adjustments so technical I couldn’t understand them; or so miraculously precise (like picking up in all the melee of sound that a clarinet was not playing an F-sharp when it should have been, naughty, naughty…) that I could only marvel at it all.
Perhaps most impressive was the sight of so many musicians going back and forth through a complex score and starting again, sight reading with total facility and equanimity. Apparently our orchestral musicians are very, very good at this because budgets are tight, time is short, so sight reading to a very high level is essential.
Rookie audience members like me have our own moments of drama, all self induced. The sudden going on of the red light induces an instant throat-tickle; and what briefly  troubles my soul as we reach the quietest passages of this exquisite music is the ghastly possibility that after all I did leave the mobile on and the builder working at that moment on the house is about to call about the important matter of the siting of the trench for the new waste pipe. I didn’t cough, he didn’t call and almost immediately the music took over again…

As well as the coming performance at Bangor on Friday (details at http://www.bnmf.co.uk/concerts.php ) Adrian Williams’ Cello Concerto is to be broadcast twice by the BBC over the next month or so and a CD is soon coming out.