Category Archives: singing in concerts

Cimbalom for Peace

Gloucester Choral Society’s Concert for Peace unfortunately turned out to be more timely than intended. It matched a rarely heard work with one that has been extremely popular in recent years. I looked for recent performances of Donald Swann’s Requiem … Continue reading

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Three Choirs 2023: the final evening

The Apostles – relatively rarely done because of the number of soloists required – was missing piece needed to complete my performances of the three great choral works by Elgar. I remarked before that The Kingdom will do its best … Continue reading

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Three Choirs 2023: From Pub to Pulpit …. to pub

The Festival Chorus had fewer concerts than in 2016, but took park this morning event on the Thursday, a collaboration with folk ensembles Broomdasher and Coracle. Like Sancta Civitas, this was a hangover of Vaughan Williams-related programming that had been … Continue reading

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Three Choirs 2023: Tuesday evening

Tuesday brought a change of orchestra with the Royal Philharmonic replacing the Philharmonia. And the most unfamiliar of the music we had to sing. Holst’s Ode to Death was only a name to me previously. As long as you can … Continue reading

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Three Choirs 2023: the first Saturday concert

Our first concert, on the evening of the first day, contained two choral items in the first half. Rise up, O Sun! was a new composition by Eleanor Alberga setting words by Blake. There was plenty to get your teeth … Continue reading

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I sell my soul to the Three Choirs Festival …. again

Actually not quite as thoroughly as last time, but I’m in the Festival Chorus for TCF Gloucester 2023 and been in rehearsal for it since the end of April. I’m singing in 3 evening concerts plus a late-morning one and … Continue reading

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… with a Coronation touch

These words qualified the title of the Erleigh Cantors’ May concert in St Peter’s Earley, the usual mix of pieces from our Cathedral weekends with some other repertoire. Last year we did some of the obvious royal pieces because of … Continue reading

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Elgar in St Paul’s outside the Walls

The name of the church sounds better in Italian – S Paolo fuori le Mura – and according to Wikipedia it’s the tenth largest church in the world. Still not the largest in which I’ve sung The Dream of Gerontius … Continue reading

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My St John’s Smith Square début

I’m rather ashamed to say that I am not sure I’ve ever been to a concert in St John’s Smith Square (though I have heard countless broadcasts from there). However, I have now, rather unexpectedly, had the chance to perform … Continue reading

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a home-grown St John Passion

I was given a ticket to Bath Abbey’s Holy Week performance of Bach’s St John Passion, given by the Abbey girls and men with Ruairi Bowen as the Evangelist and Rejouissance playing. The Abbey is still unheated (a part has … Continue reading

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a dodransbicentennial memory test

Howells Hymnus Paradisi is the major choral work which I had not sung for the longest time. I did it as a student, but never since then, although I have twice sung Howells’ Requiem, which is the source of some … Continue reading

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Review of the year: 2022

This was naturally enough a great improvement on the two previous years. My musical life (like my non-musical one) contained many events postponed from 2020 and 2021, and so became very busy. I’ve only done half a dozen overseas choir … Continue reading

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