I have not been on many foreign choir tours – on average, it’s been about once every four years – but two of the few that I’ve done involved Duruflé’s Requiem. Perhaps it’s because it is a substantial work for choir and organ, or at least with an organ arrangement by the composer. Bristol Choral Society took it to Lisbon for two performances. (The other tour I sang it on was with the New Cambridge Singers, who went to the Anglican church in Versailles.) We paired it with that old Corpus standard, Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine, and our soprano soloist Gwendolen Martin sang two other French items.
Bristol Choral Society did several foreign tours in the period immediately before I joined. This was the first one since then which was organised by the choir with repertoire of our choosing. Choir tours come in two kinds – the ones that are rapidly oversubscribed so that choir members have to be turned away, and the ones where extra singers get drafted in to make up the numbers. We had a few imports, though not so many in my section.
We had difficulties finding a rehearsal venue, but the eventual solution was a rather atmospheric one: the Anglican church located in the Protestant cemetery by the Jardim de Estrela (a very multinational cemetery, amongst other things holding Commonwealth war graves). It’s the sort of corner that I wouldn’t think of visiting otherwise, especially as it is locked a lot of the time.
Our first performance was in the church of Nossa Senhora da Cabo, Linda-a-Velha, a modern church with an impressive acoustic. Our second was in the Cathedral, a largely Romanesque building which was sufficiently solidly built that it mostly withstood the great earthquake. Both performances had appreciative audiences of 100+.
However well the plans are laid in advance, foreign tours always carry the risk of some logistical problems. (I’ve had stories of organists turning up to practice at French churches and finding themselves locked out, Notre Dame de Paris disclaimed all knowledge of our choir when we turned up to sing Sunday Mass there, and when my College choir went to Hungary what happened often bore little resemblance to what was on our itinerary.) Nothing like that happened in this case, and both venues were suitable for our forces. Portuguese organs on this showing go in for en chamade pipes.
Am I up for more foreign choir tours? It will depend where they go. I wanted to revisit Lisbon, having been there briefly a couple of years ago. I declined an invitation to Germany last year, partly because I wasn’t very interested in the destination and also didn’t have much confidence in the travel arrangements (rightly as it turned out). And when part of the point of a tour is to get to know other choir members better, it’s important to me that the choir on tour resembles the membership of the choir back home.