Welsh Journals

FIRST IN THE WORLD. By Beryl Bowen James and David Allsobrook. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1995. Pp. 130. £ 1.95. This engaging book celebrates fifty years of sustained development in the field of instrumental playing by generations of young Welsh musicians. The inspired vision of a single Welsh music educationalist led to the foundation of the National Youth Orchestra of Wales, an organization which has since played a vital role in the nation's musical life. Without this initiative, children from musically deprived areas of Wales would not have been given the opportunity to develop their instrumental skills and gain valuable experience of ensemble playing at a high level. Before the foundation of the orchestra in 1945, most Welsh music making was chorally based. Vocal music had long been fostered in the chapels and choral societies, as well as through competitive activities in eisteddfodau. Certain kinds of instrumental playing had nevertheless developed quite strongly in Wales during the nineteenth century. The harp tradition and the brass band movement were the most important but their impact was dwarfed by the vast numbers of people who regularly performed in choirs up and down the land. A number of isolated attempts were made to encourage orchestral playing in the community during the first forty years of this century but these met with only limited success. With the prospect of a long period of peace following the Second World War, the time was right for a bold initiative to develop the musical gifts of Welsh youth in an entirely new way. It was Irwyn Walters, the Inspector of Schools with responsibility for music in Wales, who single-handedly began the daunting task of building a national youth orchestra. This book is in part his biography and a tribute to his farsightedness and perseverance in achieving his objectives. Beryl James and David Allsobrook have spared no effort to make the book of considerable interest not only to past and present members of the orchestra but also to the general reader. Their decision to write to all surviving members of the orchestra asking them to share their memories of the residential courses held each summer yielded a considerable amount of useful material. Much of this information was included in the text of the chapters but selected letters were quoted in full, and placed in highlighted boxes at intervals throughout the book. These personal reminiscences were carefully chosen to give the flavour of the various periods of the orchestra's development and most were written by distinguished past players, such as Alun Hoddinott and Osian Ellis. In the early portion of the book the authors have cleverly interwoven the life of Irwyn Walters into the history of the development of orchestral