Return of The Phil to Bangor

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Just a diary post, as we've just got back home, and it's after ten in the evening. A rare (for us) evening out today, to see The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic at Pontio in Bangor. We were treated to Vaughan Williams' Five Variants of Dives & Lazarus, Mozart's Concerto No. 5 in A major for Violin & Orchestra; and finishing the evening was a rousing finale of Beethoven's Seventh, the best of the night. I've not attended anything at the Pontio centre before - even though I worked on the telecoms there when it was being built - and was well impressed by the acoustics of Theatr Bryn Terfel, pictured; which strike that perfect balance between liveliness and neutrality: the projection of the orchestra as a whole was well-balanced, and the articulation of its individual sections and solo instruments clear and precise, with nothing dominating the proceedings: someone really knew their stuff when they did the acoustic design of the place. Will certainly be going back there in the future, especially with such reasonable ticket pricing...

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