The Chandos Singers ventured outside the usual concert format and took part in performances of Russian folk-tales given by Fire Springs (alongside on one evening a one-act opera by our conductor, which I wasn’t involved in) at the Rondo Theatre, Larkhall. Our musical accompaniment to these tales was essentially of three kinds: arrangements of folksongs used as scene-setting, songs with specially-written words used to advance or summarise the plot, and sound effects. (I realised I was overdue for doing some experimental vocal pieces with this choir). I discovered that there is a whole repertoire of arrangements of Russian folksongs which is more or less unknown to British choirs, perhaps because of the language barrier. But on the evidence of what we sang they are really worth getting to know – this was presumably where efforts to maintain the Russian choral tradition were concentrated in Soviet times when religious music was discouraged. I kept finding myself spontaneously singing bits of them at odd moments.
It was a change to be on stage and to watch storytellers at close quarters. For their part, they said ‘We’ve learnt a lot about choirs’!