From time to time I’m recruited to a performance at a sufficiently late stage that I don’t find out the name of the group I’m singing with till the day! This happened last Saturday when I joined the Marshfield Bach Singers for a concert which included various choral favourites such as the Laudate Dominum from Mozart’s Solemn Vespers and Brahms’ How lovely are thy dwellings, as well as Haydn’s Little Organ Mass (which I was glad to sing without the expansions this time). There was one piece new to me: a Sancta Maria, Mater Dei by Mozart. It was the first time I’d sung with an orchestra since the concert with the Exultate Singers and Bath Baroque in January.
Meanwhile, I’ve had an invitation to sing in the expanded Bath Camerata’s Good Friday 2006 concert and am delighted to see two works which have long been on my wishlist: Janacek’s Otcenas and Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. The choir has been expanded less frequently in recent years so all the more reason to sing, in case it’s the last such event.
[It seems to have been, as the choir no longer keeps a list of former singers]