Standing on the Californian Pacific coast, drinking in the vast ocean, my memory of the stormy British winter and three hours stuck in motorway traffic fades away. Ah, if only. Turns out I’m still in Cardiff but for a few minutes Gabriella Smith’s 2014 Tumblebird Contrails really does make me believe I’m right by the sun-kissed sea, as the orchestra conjures up the surge and break of waves on the shore, the whistle of the wind. It’s a striking piece, original in flavour and imaginative in its use of the orchestra. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales got stuck into its busy, detailed textures, conducted with clarity by a late stand-in for an unwell Ryan Bancroft, Geoffrey Paterson.
If Tumblebird Contrails was a deliberately evocative