When I sang in the last English Cathedral last year, people asked what my next ambition was. I didn’t really have a single big one, but I did have a number of other things I wanted to do, among which was singing on Radio 3. I’ve sung on Radio 2 (Sunday Half Hour, back in my Manchester days) and Radio 4 (several times on the Daily Service, and more recently on the Sunday morning broadcast worship). So naturally I jumped at the chance for members of Bristol Choral Society to join the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth, in The Dream of Gerontius in St. David’s Hall, Cardiff, broadcast live as a ‘Performance on 3’.
This is a work I’ve sung a number of times before, though not in the lifetime of this blog. Previous performances have included one in Liverpool Anglican Cathedral which illustrated how much slower sound is than light, and my only performance with the CUMS Chorus. I’ve never sung in the semi-chorus, though I am a veteran of the optional top B in part 1 (I didn’t do either of these this time round). This was the first time I’d sung the work in a concert hall rather than a church.
Only Anna Larsson of the soloists survived from the original lineup; the other two (WNO stalwart Peter Hoare and Peter Rose) replaced the originally scheduled singers. The BBCNOW Chorus appears to have close links to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, which I think supplied students for the semi-chorus.
When a concert is broadcast, the apparatus of broadcasting is much less obvious than in a studio recording, or even a service. (Presumably because the audience haven’t paid to look at lots of equipment). There were microphones dangling in front of us, and an announcer came on stage to introduce the performance, but no red light that was visible to me, for example.
We got a four-star review in the Guardian and compliments on the Radio 3 Forum. The broadcast will be on iPlayer till early December.