I don’t do very many ‘come and sing’ workshop type events, but this spring there are two, six days apart.
The first was looking at Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with Gavin Carr (and Gerry Hoddinott on piano). Several dozen of us gathered in New Oriel Hall, and it was a real throwback to the South West Festival Chorus of old, and to the Mahler 8 of 2015. Most people had a link to either Bath Minerva Choir or (in some cases) the Bournemouth Sympnhony Chorus.
This work has not been performed in Bath since 1982 (and people wonder why I base my concert singing elsewhere!) although some people had sung it with the Bath Festival Chorus in Wells Cathedral in the late 1990s. I was reasonably fresh from having done it in Gloucester just over a year ago, though I would not say that I remembered it perfectly. We were fortunate in having several in the tenor section who knew it well.
The solo parts were up for grabs by anyone who wanted to have a go, and several of us sopranos did. I ducked in and out where they overlapped with the chorus lines. Much of the solo writing isn’t actually harder than what the chorus are asked to do, though of course doing both made quite a bit of extra work! It gave a chance to experience another side of the piece, in which the relationship between soloists and chorus is a complex one. Certainly any chance to sing it is worth taking.