By Adam Sweeting
CARDIFF — According to conductor Valery Gergiev, “Mahler wanted to have the sound of children’s voices in the Eighth Symphony because through this symphony he embraced almost all processes in life. It is very much connected with the triumph of the human spirit. It seems to me that he could not manage this without the children’s voices.”
When Gergiev conducted Mahler’s mighty Eighth in St Petersburg last weekend, the choral and orchestral forces of the city’s Mariinksy Theatre were joined by the 75 young singers of Only Kids Aloud, a choir of 9- to 13-year-olds from Wales formed by Tim Rhys-Evans, the founder of Only Men Aloud. Rhys-Evans was invited by the Wales Millennium Centre to create the choir for the Mahler project, though the original plan only envisaged a performance in Cardiff on Sunday. It was at Gergiev’s specific request that the fledgling troupe came to Russia to make their debut in the new Mariinsky concert hall.
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