channelling my inner Benny Hill

Carmina Burana is never going to be a favourite of mine, but this time round I enjoyed it rather more than before. Maybe with a woman conductor there’s a bit more of an air of complicity? At any rate, I confess to preferring the raunchier numbers near the end to all the stuff about spring at the beginning.

We performed it in the arrangement for two pianos and percussion, with two very co-ordinated pianists, and I think 9 percussionists! As usual I was too busy singing to work out what instrument was used when, but I noticed the presence of crotales again. I don’t think the piece loses much by being done in this arrangement, though I’m not perhaps the best judge of that.

Earlier we did Bob Chilcott’s Songs and Cries of London Town, which mix settings of poems about London with street cries. I’ve now got some more material for my garden songbook (a topic for another post) as the first one was largely about herbs.

We joined forces with the Bristol Youth Choir, who also sang Chilcott’s Dances of Time and added parents and supporters to the audience. So we sopranos were pushed right to the back of the choir stalls, where I’m not used to standing (and had occasional problems seeing round the tenor in front, especially when he scratched his ear). Doubtless it will all look different when the hall re-opens; this was our last concert there before the refit.

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