Philomusica perform their winter concert under the baton of Iwan Teifion Davies at Aberystwyth Arts Centre on Saturday, 6 December (7.30pm).

Their pieces have links to Vienna. The opening, Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, is a riotous comic opera written in Vienna in 1786 in collaboration with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte.

You will also hear the aria Per pietà, ben mio perdona from Mozart and Da Ponte’s later opera, Così fan tutti.

Grace Williams (1906-1977) is regarded as one of Wales’s most notable composers. After a career of over 45 years her music was all but forgotten until a revival on her centenary. Since 2019 there have been new recordings of her works culminating in 2025 with a recording of her last great composition, Missa Cambrensis, on the Lyrita label.

Philomusica will perform a work called Sea Sketches, for strings, comprising five movements depicting

various moods of the sea. It was written in 1944 and premiered by the BBC Welsh Orchestra in 1947. Since then Sea Sketches has become one of her most popular works.

Their main piece is Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.4, composed between 1899 and 1900 while Mahler was the conductor at the Vienna Court Opera and also, for a few years, the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. It is often portrayed as his least complicated symphony: an idyllic picture of infant happiness culminating in a child’s vision of heaven.

The soloist is Camilla Roberts. Born in Wrexham, she studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the National Opera Studio, sponsored by Welsh National Opera, with whom she subsequently became an associate artist. In 2005 she represented Wales at BBC Cardiff Singer of the World. Her performances with WNO, Royal Ballet and Opera, Opera North and Glyndebourne are numerous. She has sung all over Britain as a concert artist and recitalist.