The ‘Annual’. For so long the highpoint of the year’s schedule for many choirs. Here we had one of South Wales’ major choirs performing in their 108th Annual concert. It was a big night for them with their new conductor Pauline Carey at the helm and returning to Cwmbran Stadium in front of a big audience. They were joined for the evening by the glamorous presence of Samantha Link.

They were in good voice, producing a full-bodied sound from the sixty singers, with rich basses and a particularly fluent, lyrical tenor line. The programme had little that was unfamiliar and was directed unflamboyantly and with assurance by their new M.D. with good accompaniment from Annette Williams (a shame, however, that it was on an inadequate electric piano – the forces of a large choir demand better). There was an emphasis on musical theatre ( songs from Miss Saigon, The Lion King and the ubiquitous Les Misérables) and hymns though they were at their best in Bizet’s Divine Brahma and Mozart’s O Isis and Osiris .

The choice of artist must have been with the aim of producing as great a contrast as possible. This it achieved. Miss Link’s cabaret singing was generally polished though the use of backing tracks sometimes obscured her voice and swirled around the cavernous acoustic of Cwmbran Stadium. Her performance of Myfanwy, for instance, would have been so much more effective backed by the choir. One couldn’t help feeling that her performance belonged more to the club than the concert hall.