I was prevented by illness from joining the Erleigh Cantors for their 20th anniversary concert. So I can’t write about the concert itself but I had rehearsed the programme with the other singers and at home which allows me to put something down here.
The trickiest piece was A Vision of Aeroplanes by Vaughan Williams. Someone rehearsing the same piece for another concert around now said it was the hardest piece he’d ever sung. I now won’t find out how far my hard work with the piano and a recording would have got me and whether I’d have agreed!
The rest of the programme was more straightforward. I’d never sung Moeran’s Songs of Springtime but I notice that Good Wine is on my old Reading Phoenix Choir LP so it’s been performed in the area for a while! Another piece which was new to me was Rutter’s Te Deum – I don’t think it would have caused me many problems.
Britten’s Choral Dances from Gloriana were drilled into me very thoroughly when I learnt them with the New Cambridge Singers and I remembered them perfectly. The words vary in quality; sometimes rather touching pastiche and sometimes pretty banal (‘From Norwich city you are leaving’, ‘Woven, woven, woven, woven BAS-kets!’). The programme was completed with Holst’s Nunc Dimittis and some Tudor anthems.
I’ve heard I was missed but that the concert was a success, so I can’t have done too much damage by having to withdraw.