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The BBC National Orchestra of Wales is an integral part of Welsh culture, giving frequent premieres of works by Welsh composers. The orchestra is often active beyond Wales, recording a variety of material that includes many BBC television soundtracks.

The origins of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales lay in the Cardiff Station Orchestra, which was founded in 1924. In 1928, it was renamed the National Orchestra of Wales. This orchestra dissolved under funding pressures in 1931 but was revived as the BBC Welsh Orchestra in 1935. Wartime restrictions led the orchestra to disband in 1939, but after the war, it was revived once again and grew consistently, from 31 members to 66 members by 1976, when it was renamed the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra. The group now has 78 members. It took its present name in 1993, and an associated chorus was also named the BBC National Chorus of Wales. Notable among the orchestra's performances have been some 50 world premieres, most of which have been of music by Welsh composers, including more than 20 by Alun Hoddinott, whose namesake Hoddinott Hall now houses the orchestra's administrative offices (its concerts mostly take place at St. David's Hall in Cardiff). The orchestra and chorus also gave the world premiere of Arvo Pärt's In spe in 2010. The orchestra has helped nurture several international conducting careers, including those of Richard Hickox (principal conductor from 2000-2006), Thierry Fischer (2006-2012), Thomas Søndergård (2012-2017), and Xian Zhang (2017-2020, the first female principal conductor of any BBC orchestra. Ryan Bancroft was named principal conductor in 2020; Lisa Tregale was named artistic director, becoming the first woman to hold the post.

The orchestra has a large catalog of more than 65 recordings that is by no means restricted to the music of Welsh composers. That total does not include BBC television soundtrack recordings for, among other programs, Doctor Who. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales has recorded for the Hyperion, BIS, and Chandos labels, as well as for Linn, where it released a complete cycle of Sibelius symphonies. The year 2014 saw the release of no fewer than seven recordings by the group. In 2020, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales was heard on Beethoven Reimagined, an album by composer/DJ Gabriel Prokofiev. ~ James Manheim

Lauded for his "courage and fortitude in the face of total neglect," over the course of a creative life of 80 years -- one of the longest ever -- Havergal Brian composed big and ambitious works, including 32 symphonies and several operas, most of which went unperformed in his lifetime. Since his death, he has moved from near total obscurity to recognition as one of twentieth century England's most significant composers.

Both of Brian's parents sang in a choir, and his earliest musical experiences were of singing and playing organ in the local church. He took some rudimentary music lessons, but was largely self-taught through studying scores and taking part in local amateur performances. After supporting himself for a time as a carpenter's assistant and working for a coal mine and a timber firm, Brian decided to devote himself to music.

His first successes as a composer were part-songs and choral works for various British music festivals. Through those experiences he befriended Sir Edward Elgar and Sir Henry Wood; the latter's performance of Brian's English Suite No. 1 (1904) inspired an anonymous patron to help Brian get his music published. In 1912, Brian moved to London. He was very poor, his works weren't being performed, and at one time he contemplated suicide. He did brief service in World War I; after the war, he worked as a freelance music copyist and for many years did writing and editing work for publications like Musical Opinion and Musical World. All the while, he was composing huge pieces of music, such as the comic opera The Tigers (written 1916-1918, orchestrated 1918-1930) and the Gothic Symphony (1919-1927).

After completing his four-hour long opera Prometheus Unbound (after Shelley, 1937-1944), Brian stopped composing for a few years. But in 1948, as he put it once, "the muse returned with a rush." He then embarked on the most prolific period of his career: from 1948 to 1968 he completed 27 symphonies, four operas, and various other instrumental works. Twenty-two of those 27 symphonies were written after Brian had turned 80, and seven were written after his 90th birthday. With the completion of his Symphony No. 32 in A flat in October 1968, Brian decided he no longer had any impulse to compose. He died at age 96.

Brian was 78 years old before he heard one of his symphonies performed, in a 1954 BBC concert. Performances of his works have remained fairly rare, though the pace picked up with the formation of the Havergal Brian Society. His most notorious work is still his Symphony No. 1, the "Gothic," which for years was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "Largest Symphony." Close to two hours in length, the work calls for a vast orchestra (supplemented by four brass bands and organ), four soloists, two choirs, and children's choir. Completed back in 1927, the symphony only received its first commercial recording in 1990.

Of the five orchestras maintained by the British Broadcasting Company, the BBC Concert Orchestra is the most oriented toward light music, popular music, and jazz. The orchestra's name is somewhat inaccurate: although it does often perform live concerts, the group's most important tasks are connected to radio broadcasting.

The BBC Concert Orchestra grew out of the BBC Theatre Orchestra, which was formed in 1931 and was later renamed the BBC Opera Orchestra. In 1952, that group was reorganized as the BBC Concert Orchestra. The following year, it became the house orchestra for the BBC program Friday Night is Music Night, which, as of the late 2010s, remained on the air as the world's longest-running radio program. The orchestra performed a variety of other light music on BBC programs, accompanied popular singers, sometimes teamed with the BBC Big Band, and at times performed operatic and symphonic works. For two decades, the group gave live concerts at London's Camden Theatre, moving to the Hippodrome in North London in 1972. The orchestra's first conductor was Gilbert Vinter. Subsequent conductors have included Charles Mackerras (1954-1956), Vilem Tausky (1956-1966), Marcus Dods (1966-1970), Ashley Lawrence (1970-1989), Barry Wordsworth (1989-2006), Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart (2010-2017, remaining as the principal guest conductor), Bramwell Tovey (2018-2022) and Anna-Maria Helsing (2023-). Early digital recordings of the group include four volumes of "Golden Cinema Classics," released on the Bainbridge Classics label in 1992.

Composers associated with the BBC Concert Orchestra have sometimes been associated with popular music spheres; they include Radiohead guitarist and keyboardist Jonny Greenwood, who became the orchestra's composer-in-association in 2004. The orchestra's other responsibilities have included recording jingles for BBC News programs. The BBC Concert Orchestra has a large catalog of recordings, many of them covering British light music, film music, and symphonic music that has not been recorded elsewhere. Many of their recordings have appeared on the Dutton Laboratories (which has issued a lengthy series of light music/easy listening recordings), Chandos, and Somm labels, among others. In 2019, the orchestra issued an album on Regent of music by its new composer-in-residence, Dobrinka Tabakova. Recent recordings have seen the orchestra moving further into serious repertory. In 2020, the group released a recording of Herbert Howells' Missa Sabrinensis on the Hyperion label and another of Britten's Saint Nicolas and A Ceremony of Carols on Signum Classics. By 2024, when the BBC Concert Orchestra released the album Dorothy Howell: Orchestral Works on Signum Classics, its recording catalog comprised at least 90 items. ~ James Manheim

Not a celebrity conductor, Britain's prolific Martyn Brabbins has rediscovered a striking amount of neglected music and presented it in convincing performances. Early on, he made a significant mark through recordings of contemporary Scottish composers and as one of the main conductors involved in Hyperion's extensive Romantic Piano Concerto series.

A self-described late starter, Brabbins was born on April 13, 1959. He attended Goldsmith's College and played in brass bands but had little other performing experience before studying conducting with Ilya Musin at the Leningrad Conservatory from 1986 to 1988. Upon his return to England, Brabbins won the 1988 Leeds Conductors Competition. His professional debut came that year as a last-minute substitute with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Within a few years, Brabbins had guest-conducted all the BBC orchestras and major and minor ensembles throughout England and Ireland. From 1994 to 2005, he was the associate conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and later added to his schedule the job of principal conductor of the contemporary music group Sinfonia 21. Brabbins expressed particular enthusiasm for "anything after Beethoven," especially such Russian composers as Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. He has also landed many opera engagements, mainly with England's lesser houses, conducting works ranging from Mozart standards to Bliss' The Olympians and Tchaikovsky's The Slippers.

Brabbins' debut recording came on Hyperion in 1994, on Vol. 7 of the Romantic Composers Series, backing pianist Marc-André Hamelin on a recording of music by Adolf Henselt and Charles-Valentin Alkan. In 1997, he conducted the first commercial recording of Korngold's Die Kathrin. Brabbins served as the artistic director of the Cheltenham Music Festival between 2005 to 2007. From 2009 to 2015, he was the principal guest conductor of DeFilharmonie (Royal Flanders Philharmonic) and was the chief conductor of the Nagoya Philharmonic in Japan from 2012 to 2016. Brabbins was named the music director of the English National Opera in 2016, resigning his post there in 2023 in protest against budget cuts at the organization.

Brabbins has made more than 150 recordings for labels such as Chandos, NMC, and Deutsche Grammophon, along with Hyperion. His recorded efforts include a disc of Cyril Scott works with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra (2004), Bax (2004), and Britten on Film (2009). He made numerous recordings with both the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the main BBC Philharmonic, often devoting his efforts to unfamiliar repertory from both Britain and continental Europe. His recording pace increased as the new century went on, and the year 2011 saw no fewer than eight Brabbins recordings. In 2020, he was heard on six releases, including a pair of Hyperion albums -- one offering music by Vaughan Williams, the other music by James MacMillan -- and a BIS album containing works by John Pickard. Brabbins paused only slightly during the COVID-19 pandemic, returning in 2023 with six recordings once again, one of them a performance of Charles Villiers Stanford's Requiem with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Brabbins has taught as a visiting professor at the Royal College of Music. ~ James Reel & James Manheim