the Chorus Angelorum

This was the name of the choir assembled to sing a big performance (really, there is no other kind) of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in Bath Abbey tonight under the direction of Gavin Carr and accompanied by the English Chamber Orchestra.

I’d sung with about half the singers before in one place or another. The combined firepower of the choir was quite considerable, but I’d had a thorough audition for this concert so no one could question my right to be there. As the BFC performs increasingly infrequently, opportunities to sing with an orchestra of this calibre are rarer in the area now.

I’ve never really performed the St. Matthew Passion properly and it’s been on my wishlist. A long time ago I sang in a ‘come and sing’ performance in Oxford’s University Church with organ accompaniment; but the Evangelist fell ill and so his part had to be spoken! I’ve come close to doing it a number of times since then, most recently with the Exultate Singers a couple of years ago.

Despite this, I didn’t have much difficulty learning my part. I think I’ve heard the work so many times that it’s just sunk in at a subliminal level and I know what the key changes and most of the soprano lines are.

As in the last concert I sang in Bath Abbey, the interval had to be extended, but with more reason; someone in the audience fell ill (unlike the previous time when it was because two of the orchestra were still in the pub). If anyone who was there is reading this and hasn’t looked at the double-page spread just inside the back cover of the programme, I recommend doing so.

We sang in English, which fits the music well, though in some of the chorales in particular I looked enviously at the German because the meaning of the English had been watered down. At least it lacked the infelicities of the translation in the recording I have (‘You forsaken chickens’ being the most glaring example of this). We used the new Novello edition which has some decidedly tricky page-turns – I found myself writing v.s. all over the place – but I suppose that is inevitable in a piece with a lot of stops and starts for a choir (or often two choirs).

I won’t list all the soloists, otherwise people searching on their names will keep getting brought here. But I don’t think I’ve ever shared a concert platform with Emma Kirkby before, though I have heard her perform a few times, most recently in a Mahler 4. Actually in this piece my soloist fantasies focus more on the alto arias rather than the soprano ones (of course they also involve being given the vocal and interpretative abilities to do the music justice); here these were sung by Sarah Connolly.

My performance shouldn’t be detached from that of the rest of the choir; nevertheless I dedicated it to the memory of my old friend Philip Hall, whose funeral took place in Little St. Mary’s Church in Cambridge on the day of the concert.