Dibble-Dibble. . . GUSTAV!!

In the immortal words of Leif Segerstam. I don’t know whether he was talking about Mahler 8, but it seems an appropriate response.

At last, an opportunity came round to perform this again. It didn’t work out quite as planned, because my attempt to travel to Poole to sing in the performance conducted by Gavin Carr failed. However I was able to arrange to sing instead in the second performance in Exeter Cathedral conducted by Philip Mackenzie.

I rehearsed the work with Bath Minerva Choir and we joined forces with members of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, some of whom joined us for a rehearsal in Saltford before a big joint rehearsal near Bournemouth. The chorus was not huge and so a lot of the ‘scaled-down’ subsections of it in part 2 were sung by all of us. As I was singing in choir 2 this time, there was a lot of new music to learn.

Our orchestra were the young professionals of the Amadeus orchestra. The children’s chorus (and you know it’s getting really serious in this symphony when they come in – it’s a bit like the xylophone in a symphony by Shostakovich) were the BSO youth choir.

I had to do something I’d never done before, which would have come naturally to many organists: follow the conductor on a screen (direct view was blocked by a pillar). This was tricky at first because of having to watch a two-dimensional object not a 3-dimensional one, but by the performance I’d got used to it. The system has the possible advantage that the conductor can’t see you or glare at you.

I’ve done so many great works with Gavin and it was a shame not to sing this under his baton, but it was not second best to sing the Exeter performance only – I’m told by people who sang in both that each had its merits. Exeter Cathedral more or less sold out in what space we left for the audience.

I hope it won’t be too long before I get to sing this again. I still find the words of Part II a bit hard to take – all that business with floating hermits and so on – and the chorus part of Part II is very fragmented, but there’s really nothing else like this work.