To gauge our level of musical knowledge there was an associated quiz. I won’t go into great detail because the researchers might use the questions again elsewhere. There were some simple aural tests, questions on musical history, and pieces of music and instruments to identify. We were also played multiple recordings of the same passage and asked which interpretation we preferred. I’ll just describe one question which was I think included out of interest rather than to test us. We heard three performances of a piece of guitar music by Albeniz and were asked to say which we thought was played by a woman. Actually I got this right, though purely by guessing. With pianists, I think it is true that women tend to have a lighter touch than men, but the overall range is the same, so you can’t tell by listening.

I’m happy to say that I won the competition, mainly due to being able to identify most of the pieces of music, so I got two free tickets to go to St. George’s in June.

Back to Low Sunday 2012. We sang the Saturday evensong in the Lady Chapel – itself larger than most churches. We filled this relatively intimate space with Byrd’s Sing joyfully, V-W’s O taste and see and for a bit more beef, Stanford in B flat.

On the Sunday we were in the ‘Big Space’ for which we had one of the Cathedral’s approved organists. I know the requirement to use an organist on this list puts some choirs off coming to Liverpool, but without it a lot of rehearsal time could easily get used up on getting the ensemble together. Our Mass setting was Mozart’s in F K192, which I think I may have done before, but if so remembered nothing from it. Evensong featured Howells’ Gloucester canticles and a second helping of Stanford, Ye choirs of new Jerusalem which we used to bawl out on Easter Day at Little St. Mary’s. This being Liverpool, we only had rather miserable scraps of psalmody to sing. I had a look at their chant book and it seemed to have a very limited variety of chants, so clearly psalms aren’t a very high priority.

I got some time to look around the building and found a window near the West end depicting a selection of church musicians. There can’t be many representations of John Goss and F.A.G. Ouseley in stained glass.

There weren’t problems with the singing – the usual crop of WNO regulars did a good job – and I fear that the root of it was really in the work itself. It pains me as a Berlioz enthusiast to say this, but at the end of the day this opera really feels a bit more like extended incidental music to a cut-down version of Shakespeare’s play. Ah yes, Shakespeare. This performance was in English, and while some of the Bard’s lines were retained, this showed up that the rest of the back-translation into English didn’t really match up. At least with Berlioz’ French libretto, it’s all equally distant from the original.

I had the feeling that the production had been tailored to appeal to a particular audience, with its extravagants sets, mannered acting (everyone froze during Hero’s big aria in Act 1) and Donald Maxwell’s buffo Somarone. Now I am not someone who feels it is an offence against political correctness if those attending an artistic event do not precisely match the make-up of the local adult population in all respects; but I think this was the oldest opera audience I’ve ever been a part of, and I saw only one black person in it. Shouldn’t WNO be trying to reach a wider cross-section of Bristol?

Reviews:

• Guardian
• Telegraph

I was particularly fortunate on Palm Sunday when I came in as part of a procession and was one of the first to be directed to the north transept, where I had a ringside view of the altar. I was right next to the choir, of about 30 men and boys. Two organs were used, the main one for accompanying the congregation, and a chamber organ with the choir (the treble soloists were miked). As tends to happen in Italy, the music didn’t really live up to the liturgy. There was some plainsong and responsorial psalms (which one could join in, as the music was printed in the service booklets) and much of the choir’s music appeared to be home-grown (they sang from copies of a hand-written score). It was not trite and not in unison, but not very interesting either.

I didn’t go to the Chrism Mass on Maundy Thursday, but I saw a service booklet and the quality of the music appeared to be rather higher, with more plainchant and some familiar hymns. Good to see that Purcell’s Westminster Abbey has made it over the Alps! There was also a hymn to the tune of Abide with Me, which I’ve come across elsewhere in Italy.

As usual with these ventures, there was a chance to discover lesser-known pieces: for example, Schubert’s setting of a psalm in Hebrew for a Viennese synagogue. This was balanced by avoiding those pieces such as Fierrebras that I’d previously tried and failed with. Of course the programmes had to include all the Lieder (I recall the previous broadcast of all the Lieder over the space of a year to mark the anniversary of his death). It was fun to play the game of turning on the radio and trying to guess the singer; as they largely stuck to great interpreters of these songs, I was able to do this a lot of the time.

But I have one gripe. When this was done for J.S. Bach, the programming was comparable in its overall length and the number of separate pieces to be included. With Bach, the programme listings told you exactly when every last cantata and chorale prelude was due to be programmed, and details of the performers, no matter what time of day or night it went out. With Schubert, this was only done for the major works; everything else was grouped into ‘themes’. So if you had a favourite obscure song or classic performance, you could not find out when it would come round or who the singer would be. Did they broadcast Dinu Lipatti playing the Impromptus? Marian Anderson singing Death and the Maiden? I hope so, but I had no way of telling, or of making a point of catching them.

I attended a concert which was broadcast live as part of the BBC’s mammoth Schubertiad, Elisabeth Leonskaja playing the last two piano sonatas, D959 and D960, in the Assembly Rooms.

The audience was not very large, and I knew a fair number of them, which gave the event the feel of a private party. In fact, on talking to some it became clear that almost all of us, myself included, had been given our tickets by various cultural organisations in Bath. I suspect that the tickets had probably not sold well because there isn’t a regular concert series at the Assembly Rooms outside the Music Festival and the Mozartfest, so people didn’t really know about it. So a few days ago tickets were distributed via channels that were likely to reach music lovers.

Anyway we agreed that the concert really should have attracted a bigger audience. She favoured slower tempi and a less demonstrative style than some. Apart from a moment in one encore, it was all note perfect. The encores were the slow movement of D664 and, almost inevitably, the impromptu in Gb.

Some mood-setting music was played beforehand and along with the expected Elgar, Vaughan Williams etc. there was Zadok the Priest by Handel. Actually, this was the most appropriate piece for the occasion, because Handel was himself naturalised, though in those days it had to be done by Act of Parliament.

I await your arrival next year as new director of the Bath International Music Festival with interest. I know that you will have already started planning your first Festival, but as a Festival-goer of some fifteen years standing, may I tell you about some things I hope to see?

Establish primacy
Bath now promotes itself as a ‘Festival City’ with a clutch of other festivals competing for attention: including the Mozartfest and festivals of film, literature (adult and children’s), comedy, Shakespeare, Jane Austen and J. S. Bach. The International Music Festival needs to work to keep its profile. One way would be to aim to reverse a change that took place a couple of years ago when the length of the Festival was reduced by five or six days (which resulted amongst other things in the loss of the jazz weekend). It is now barely any longer than some of the other festivals. I’m also not sure that the inconsistency of calling it both the ‘International Music Festival’ and the ‘MusicFest’ does it any favours. And ditch that logo that looks as if a fly has got squashed on the paper!

Street Publicity
It used to be impossible not to notice when the Festival was on; there were displays on the Festival themes all over the city in shop windows (for which prizes were awarded). Recently it’s just been some slender and inconspicuous banners near the Guildhall – bring back the banner across Milsom St. (as the Literature Festival is currently doing), and if the Council tries to tell you that you’re only allowed a banner there for a week at a time, stand up to them!

It’s not just music
Please keep the multimedia events (such as ‘On the Edge of Life’ at the BRSLI in Queen Square) going, as people are often willing to try something different at festivals and these can provide some of the most memorable occasions. Some years ago there were late-night concerts where the audience were seated less formally, and, while the Festival still does folk music, Indian classical music is performed much less frequently than it once was. And the Festival used to have events that didn’t involve music at all, many of which were not expensive to put on. For example, Kirsten Elliott’s sell-out walking tours of Bath, which have now been snapped up by the Literature Festival. Please give some thought to reviving this side of the Festival.

Know your audience
At most Festival concerts I’ve been to, I’ve been invited to complete a questionnaire. But this questionnaire has assumed that I am a visitor to the city, to the extent that some questions are impossible to answer if you live there. (‘How long are you staying in Bath?’ followed by some multiple choice boxes, for example.) Please remember that you have a local audience too, and try to find out more about us and who are the potential Festival-goers you aren’t reaching. This leads on to my next point:

Woo the young
The Festival has some events specifically for children, but they rarely seem to be making the transition into attending adult concerts. At any rate when I take my elder children (now aged 12 and 10) to Festival concerts, they are often the only children present. Sadly, I know of children with music scholarships at local schools who’ve never attended a Festival concert. Perhaps that says something about their parents, but surely there is a natural constituency out there which could be reached, maybe by promoting the cheaper children’s tickets via schools or the various children’s choirs which have recently sprung up?

In fact my children are sometimes the only people under about 35 at Festival concerts, so there are other age groups needing to be encouraged to come. I am not too pessimistic about the death of the audiences: like the Russian priest who said that he was not worried that his congregation consisted only of babushkas, because as time passed a new generation of babushkas would appear. But those empty seats could be filled by more people under 50!

Scheduling
I’ve noticed some curious scheduling clashes creeping in in recent years. Some examples: a large orchestral concert two days before the ‘opening-night’ party, a performance by talented pupils at one of the major music schools which was in a midweek lunchtime slot when local children of the same age couldn’t go, a choir singing madrigals in the Pump Room while the firework display was going on close by, and the opening night procession having to squeeze through a gap in some roadworks. Which reminds me, you’ve probably already discovered that Bath’s streets are very frequently dug up, and the timetables put out for doing this are a fiction and not to be relied on. Don’t be fooled!

Use social media
I’m one of a thousand or so people who ‘like’ the Festival on Facebook and get updates about it; there were about a dozen during the last Festival. But there is more that it could do with social networking tools. A few years ago it would have been a good idea to make some concerts Facebook ‘events’, so people could say they were going and invite their friends over Facebook. Social media keep changing so I shan’t make definite suggestions – just try to use what’s popular at the moment to reach people.

Invite the best
The Festival’s reputation is a huge asset and it should be able to draw really big names, as well as giving opportunities to early-career artists. Don’t let the list of performers be too closely defined by your own circle of personal contacts, distinguished though some of them may be.

Revive the Bath Festival Chorus
I think your predecessor wasn’t at all interested in this; it never performed under her directorship, after several years when its appearances had become increasingly sporadic. But in its final season it was broadcast on Radio 3 and gave a concert on its own conducted by James MacMillan. Many of those who took part then are still singing in Bath, including some of the city’s best amateur singers, and we have a number of excellent choir trainers in the area. The Festival Chorus ticked the boxes of involving the local community and performing contemporary music. And I see that under your direction the St. Magnus Festival had a chorus of ’100 singers from all parts of Orkney’, so surely we can put something similar together in Somerset. However, if the Festival Chorus were restarted, it should be properly promoted with a website, and vacancies for singers should be advertised.

And many of us, especially families, would love to see the return of the opening party with fireworks in front of the Royal Crescent, even if in our case it means picking bits of cardboard casing out of our garden for weeks afterwards! But I realise we are in a time of austerity.

Indeed, I know that some of what I’m asking for might cost more than you can really budget for at present, but that isn’t true of all of it. I hope also that this all doesn’t just sound like a string of requests to go back to an imagined ‘golden age’ in the last century, because there have been many other changes to the Festival which I haven’t regretted or doubtless even noticed! And I expect you have some new ideas that haven’t been tried here before, which I look forward to seeing in action. In the meantime I wish you all the best of luck as you prepare to take over.

Yours, Virginia Knight

Eric was a survivor from a gentler and less technology-ridden age. My dealings with him were in 2005 and I think he was the last choirmaster I’ve encountered who didn’t use email (I’m not sure about John Marsh at the Lord Mayor’s Chapel) – I had to ring him up and give my details, and maybe that was why I never got onto the choir register. (I do still know one or two people in the choir world who think an email is an empty text message with a Word document attached. I know who they are because I’ve had to whitelist them, otherwise their messages get classified as spam.)

The BRAT (if they will forgive my abbreviating it so) seem to be the only people using the Pump Room for concerts these days. In the past it has been made use of rather more frequently. When we first came to Bath the Allegri String Quartet had a regular concert series there, but that ended after a few years. Likewise the Chantry Singers gave a Christmas concert (I sang in several of these) but these stopped when the choir disbanded.

I’ve been to some Bath Festival events at the Pump Room, staged in a rather more relaxed fashion than the usual rows of sets facing a platform. One was a late-night performance Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, where we sat at tables, cabaret-style. I’d walked the Lyke Wake Walk a couple of days previously and still felt fairly spaced-out. The other was the Paragon Singers ending the ‘Party in the City’ on an opening night, accidentally accompanied by nearby fireworks, where the audience sat around casually on chairs or the floor.

The Pump Room has a nice acoustic and seats a fair number of people without being overwhelmingly large. Admittedly there is work if it needs to be set out as a concert hall, but it is a pity it is not so used more often.