This converted church in Cardiff, the city where it all began for Matthews as a busker 15 years ago, is unassuming enough to cater for this former pop siren turned married mother of two. What is it about Wales? Its most precious cultural icons – Dylan Thomas, Richard Burton, John Cale et al – always move to America Cerys Matthews has bucked the trend. Hickox lived and breathed every note, investing a Mahlerian intensity in great choral tuttis. This outstanding event will surely long resonate in the memory of all those present.
In the following Prom given by the BBC SO under David Robertson, which featured a curiously hard-driven Haydn “Surprise” Symphony and the sensitive artistry of Pierre-Laurent Aimard as soloist in Brahms’ First Piano Concerto, it was the centrepiece of the concert, the UK premiere of George Benjamin’s “Dance Figures”, which found conductor and orchestra in their element, responding with great imagination to realising Benjamin’s rich textures, enticing harmonies and audacious rhythms.Comprising nine satisfyingly contrasting choreographic scenes, with the spirits of Stravinsky, Ravel and Webern recalled at various stages, this richly colourful piece is Benjamin’s first work conceived for dance, though it works just as well as a Concerto for Orchestra, refreshing and invigorating the repertoire without arid experimentation or striving for effect.BBC Proms to 9 September (020 7589 8212; www.bbc.co.uk/proms). The crowning glory of the concert was Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, a work tailor-made for the vast spaces of the Albert Hall, delivered at white-heat in an electrifying interpretation.

Arthur Bliss’s quirky and occasionally surprisingly dissonant Colour Symphony is the kind of unjustly neglected work Hickox has explored to great effect in his six years at the helm of his orchestra, and it received a committed and persuasive performance. In Elgar’s In the South (Alassio), Hickox caught the work’s extreme changes of mood: the vehemence of the Grandioso “Roman” episode brought out Elgar’s audaciously primordial writing and the ensuing fragile viola solo held a packed Royal Albert Hall in its thrall. Richard Hickox’s last Prom as principal conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales appropriately celebrated the conductor’s indefatigable advocacy of British music. There’s nothing you can do.”It seems Etran Finatawa are on a mission of far greater urgency that just making us dance to their gorgeous grooves.Etran Finatawa perform live in the Siam Tent at 1pm on 29 July at the Womad Festival in Reading (0118-939 0930; www.womad ). Those same alarm bells chime in the minds of Ghalitane and Bagui. “In my opinion, I can’t talk about the others, we’re in danger of losing our nomadic culture,” Ghalitane declares “Education poses a huge dilemma for us. We need to educate our children, but once we’re gone, what will they become.. bureaucrats and administrators They won’t go back to the bush And the desert is growing every day Animals can’t eat sand Once sand gets into the stomach of a cow, that’s it She dies.

“When I’m in Europe it feels like I’m permanently shut up inside I can’t see the horizons and there’s so much noise Back home we’re free.”But that freedom is under threat. The droughts and famine of 2005 in Niger rang alarm bells throughout the world. “We hope in the future to create a recording studio, a record label and distribution system, not just for the Tuareg, but for all musicians,” says Ghalitane “The music scene in Niger isn’t in very good shape. There’s no infrastructure and the whole question of composer’s rights hasn’t been sorted out. The government do very little to help because unlike the Malians, they haven’t understood the importance of music for developing the image of the country.