being outed as a singer

Posted on September 2, 2018 by vhk10

Our recent summer holiday included a couple of occasions where I revealed myself to be a singer or at least someone knowledgeable about music. We were in SW France near the border with Spain, and in fact both occasions were over the border. Or sort of, in the first instance. Llívia is an enclave and exclave surrounded by French territory, which goes some way to explaining what happened when I went to Mass in the church there – in Catalan with a bit of congregational singing, not done with much enthusiasm. I couldn’t really sing or say the words as there weren’t Mass books and I don’t know the language. Until that is we got to the Alleluia at the Gospel. I recognised the tune as being from O Filii et Filiæ and joined in. After the last Alleluia the rather chatty priest looked in my direction and said Merci, clearly taking me for a stray Frenchwoman who’d infiltrated his service.

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Choral columns

Later on we went to Barcelona for the day and I booked on to an English-language tour of the Palau de la Música Catalana. This magnificant Art Nouveau building was designed very much with the needs of the choir it was built for in mind – there is a lift to take them up to the stage and a terrace with columns adorned with flowers and foliage, to give a restful sight to singers who spent their days in factories or offices. Would that more concert halls were so choir-centred in their design! It has a special place in musical history for me, I found out later, as it was the venue for the premiere of Berg’s violin concerto. At the end of the tour there was a short recital on the organ – a nice little earner for local organists. We were asked to guess how many pipes in the organ. My guess was much the largest, and although still some way short of the true value, the closest to the correct answer. I felt obliged to admit that I do hang out with organists.

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the asbestos symphony

Posted on August 25, 2018 by vhk10

The texts of Mahler’s 8th Symphony can be problematic. How do the two parts fit together? And can one take Part II at all seriously in an age when gender differences are played down?

A further potential problem with Mahler’s 8th, as with Haydn’s Creation, is relentless positivity. Where can there be a bit of darkness to introduce contrast? Mahler achieves this at various points: the jagged vocal lines at the prayer to dispel enemies in Part I, the scene-setting opening of Part II amid bleak rocky cliffs (I am writing this in sight of similar landscapes in SW France), and a later passage where angels describe the effort required to carry Faust ‘Uns bleibt ein Erdenrest’. This last uses a minor-key version of the opening theme (also heard in Part I), and took a lot of rehearsing, mainly in order to ensure correct balancing of the many different vocal parts; but I think the words are a clue to how the two parts fit together.

If I understand this passage rightly, it explains how hard it is to separate what is spiritual in Faust from what is earthly, something that can only be done by everlasting love. It’s couched in the scientific language Goethe sometimes turns to – there can’t be many works in the classical canon that mention asbestos. So one could see message of Part II as ‘free the spirit’, which leads us straight back to Part I’s Pentecost message.

I don’t claim to understand Goethe‘s Faust part 2, or (as I’ve said before) Mahler, but this seems to join the two parts together nicely, and the more I sing this work, the more musical links I find between the part too (it all seems ultimately to be built out of fourths).

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taking part in Prom 11

Posted on August 10, 2018 by vhk10

I’ve often been told of great occasions Bristol Choral Society members have taken part in before I joined, such as a Prom performance of the Gothic Symphony. Without a doubt joining the BBC National Chorus of Wales (and the BBC Symphony Chorus and London Symphony Chorus) for Mahler’s Eighth will join them in the choir’s collective memory. There can be few experiences other than performances of this symphony where so many people stand so close together, collectively creating something beautiful and uplifting.

It marked the final concert of Thomas Søndergård as principal conductor of the BBC NOW. My favourite among the soloists was Marianne Beate Kielland, who was a late stand-in; but I could only hear them obliquely. This isn’t the largest performance of the work I’ve sung in (the first ever one I did, in Green Park Station in 2000, had a choir of 600) but the BBC NOW was appropriately enlarged with suitably grand percussion – a real church-style bell rather than the tubular bell you usually get for example.

I was put in choir 2, but when given the choice of part, I opted for soprano 1; in fact there is little splitting, but you get a shot at a top C at the end of the first movement, and it was particularly satisfying to see someone on Twitter single this moment out for praise. In fact the chorus were complimented in a lot of the reviews.

It may seem a familiar work now (I’ve now sung it 3 times in the last 4 years), but there were 5 notes I’d never sung: ‘Er will uns lernen’. When I previously was in Choir II they were given to the young people’s chorus. No performance ever follows Mahler’s instructions to the letter – they just get too complicated about sorting out lighter voices and putting people in the front row. And the usual bar-counting and working out leads, although as I get to know the work better this is a little less perplexing. We choir 2 sopranos had one particularly nippy stand just before ‘Du schwebst’.

Lots of reviews as you might expect. The general consensus seems to be that it was a four-star performance. I’ll put some thoughts about the symphony itself in another post.

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when does a Willis not sound like a Willis?

Posted on August 8, 2018 by vhk10

Having a free morning before my own Proms performance, I got wind of the Sunday organ recital by the Latvian organist Iveta Apkalna and took the opportunity to go along. I would not normally be around in London on a Sunday morning, and I heard someone pointing out at the box office that it was at the worst possible time for active organists, many of whom would be playing for a church service at the time.

I have heard so much live organ music, usually as closing voluntaries, and I recognise many pieces without knowing what they are called, or even who wrote them. In other cases, going to a recital allows me to discover how they continue after the opening section during which the choir processes out; Franck’s Pièce héroïque and Bach’s Fantasia BWV72, played in this recital, fall into this category. Other familiar pieces included Widor’s Toccata from his Fifth Symphony, and Apkalna’s own arrangement of Fauré’s Pavane. Unknown to me were Thierry Escaich’s Deux Évocations and George Thalben-Ball’s Variations on the standard theme by Paganini. The latter were mostly for pedals with a bit of what I think of as Victorian chapel soupiness thrown into the middle for some light relief. I was taken with the encore, Aivars Kälejs’ Toccata on the Chorale ‘Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr’.

I don’t feel very competent to pronounce on the performances but they were expressive and at times virtuosic, my only reservation being that I felt there was some rhythmic slackness in the Bach. But perhaps that cannot be avoided on an instrument that size. Also that there were some minor issues with the tuning – inevitable in a hot summer? As I left I overheard a veteran of these recitals remarking that it was the first one he’d heard where it didn’t sound like a Willis.

Review:

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the Big Sing

Posted on July 16, 2018 by vhk10

I joined the South Cotswold Big Sing Group for Berlioz’ Grande Messe des Morts in Gloucester Cathedral, conducted by Adrian Partington. So a revisit of Bristol & Gloucester Choral Societies’ combined performance a few years ago, with quite a few of the same people involved. The orchestra was the British Sinfonietta, which seems not to be a single outfit, but a body of musicians from which ensembles can be drawn, as it was playing in three different places that night! There were certainly plenty of them in Gloucester.

Earlier in the year I watched a lot of the ice skating in the Winter Olympics, and it occurred to me that the final section of the Lacrymosa (beginning the reappearance of the initial theme) would make a good accompaniment to a routine, with its contrasting gentler second subject and dramatic climaxes – a double axel on the tam-tam clash? I do not regard it as a criticism of a piece of sacred music that it could also be skated to.

Our tenor soloist, Nick Pritchard, was just the sort of voice I want for this piece, floating over the strings and flute in the Sanctus. I’ve just transferred a couple of LP recordings to CD – both were by EMI and Robert Tear must have been their house tenor as he sings in both. André Previn’s is rather ponderous, but Louis Frémaux has the measure of the French military brass sound, doubtless helped by a couple of stints he did in the French Foreign Legion.

I dedicated my performance to the memories of my husband’s aunt Angela, who died last year and who loved Berlioz (see my last post) and my cousin Joan, a music teacher, who died earlier this year.

I’d be interested in joining the South Cotswold Big Sing Group again depending on the repertoire and conductor – it meets every two years or so.

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another collection of LPs

Posted on July 13, 2018 by vhk10

Some years ago I transferred our LP collection to CD. I am now embarking on digitising a second collection of LPs, formerly belonging to my husband’s late aunt and dating from the late 1950s to the 1980s. It would seem that the only CD player she ever owned was in her car; a combination of early hearing loss, marriage to someone who wasn’t a music lover and a resistance to new technology meant that she never made the transition to buying CDs.

The collection reveals that she had some very particular tastes; for example Mozart but not Haydn, and a preference for chamber music and Czech composers, especially Dvořák. There are a few operas, including L’Incoronazione di Poppea and La Clemenza di Tito; did she have a thing about operas set in Ancient Rome?

A group of recordings of orchestral works by Berlioz stands out, as there are few other French works. She must have had a particular liking for this composer, which I share, so it’s a shame that I never realised it and talked to her about it. I know there are further discoveries to be made as I work my way through the collection.

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a first visit to Prior Park

Posted on July 8, 2018 by vhk10

I went to hear a joint concert given by the Paragon Singers and Divertimento (the latter from Leamingon Spa) in the chapel of Prior Park College.

I’d heard a lot about the chapel but never been in it. It is an impressive building, with a coffered ceiling and Corinthian columns, dedicated (not very appropriately for Bath) to Our Lady of the Snows. The concert was in aid of restoration of the building, with a collection at the end, followed by the chance to buy wine and strawberries and admire the very impressive view of the city from the steps of the main school building. It was well attended with a lot of people I knew from the Bath choral scene present.

The programme was loosely themed around birds and flowers, with a number of pieces I didn’t know. Each choir chose repertoire they were comfortable with, which avoided the problem of joint recitals – one party showing up the other.

There were some pieces I would be interested in singing – such as Britten’s Flower Songs, two of which were performed (I’ve sung most of the rest of his music for choir). And a fun arrangement of the calypso Yellow Bird, a melody which I heard played again the following day at a Windrush-themed church service, and which I dimly remember singing at primary school. There were two arrangements by Holst that were new to me (There was a tree and I love my love) and, rather less successfully, Vaughan Williams’ of Greensleeves, the rather unvocal lines suggesting this was a by-product of his Fantasia on the same tune.

It was all nicely performed and the choirs were good advocates of the music they’d chosen. But listening to this, I realised that I don’t much regret leaving chamber choir music for the symphony chorus repertoire. I wouldn’t be terribly sorry never to do those pieces which I’d never sung.

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nightingales in Plymouth

Posted on July 4, 2018 by vhk10

We sang about these in Paul Gerhardt’s hymn Geh aus, mein Herz during an Anglo-German wedding we were guests at recently. (Sadly, the ornithological reality is that they are not to be found within about 200 miles of the city.) The music for the four hymns was printed in the order of service (not always in the keys it was played in). There wasn’t a choir, so the singers among the guests had to give a lead and work out where the other singers in the congregation were. The bride and groom had met in the string section of an orchestra and a string orchestra of wedding guests was assembled at the reception.

A few weeks ago there was another wedding at my church with an unusually large music requirement: three anthems (including Parry’s I was glad) and no fewer than five hymns. We really earned our £20!

Both made a pleasant change from the rather dull unison fare which choirs and congregations generally get offered at weddings now.

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a return to Bradford

Posted on June 23, 2018 by vhk10

Bradford Cathedral was famously the last of the English Church of England Cathedrals that I performed in. I wasn’t expecting to return so quickly but the Cathedral Chamber Choir’s Artistic Director is now Director of Music there, so we were invited up to sing a half-term weekend. With more time to inspect the building than before, I noticed the similarities of the more recent parts to both Guildford (designed by the same architect) and St Edmundsbury Cathedrals.

There were some discoveries in the repertoire chosen. For Saturday evensong our canticles were Purcell in B flat, which were described to us as being unfairly neglected compared with the G minor set. And this is indeed unfair – how has a Purcellian like me missed these? – although they are rather harder than the G minor setting. I sang in some of the verse sections. Our anthem was another piece I’d never sung, although I’d heard it a few times: Bach’s O Jesu Christ meins Lebens Licht, often designated as a seventh motet. Its performance context, intended to be sung in procession with litui, seems to me to put it in a category of its own; at any rate it sounds to me like a cantata movement that got away.

On Sunday morning we teamed Jonathan Dove’s Missa Brevis with Libera nos by Sheppard, which we sang from the Lady Chapel at the extreme east of the building. I’ve not done much Sheppard at all, and very little recently but on the basis of this I would like to do more. Sunday evensong was Stainer’s I saw the Lord for the second time in two weeks for me, with Howells’ Westminster Service, one of my favourites of his canticle settings.

We had a block booking to stay at the Midland Hotel nearby. It’s a rather grand example of the ‘railway hotel’ for a railway station that now no longer exists. If you are ever there, do check out the ‘back door’ entrance that once led to the platform.

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recalling Cambridge

Posted on June 13, 2018 by vhk10

During my time in Cambridge I sang with two different chapel choirs, and I’ve recently been reminded of both.

First was a memorial concert near Bath to mark 20 years since the death of William Walls, for whom I sang for a year when he was organ scholar of Christ’s College. During that year I came across a lot of the church music repertoire for the first time, especially canticle settings, of which I’d done very few until then. He was an enthusiast especially for the music of Samuel Sebastian Wesley (I sang on a recording Christ’s choir made which was believed to be the first complete recording of the service in E), and I was among a group of his friends and relatives who sang Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, as well as The Silver Swan by Gibbons.

The following weekend I was invited to Cambridge to join the choir of my College, Corpus. The main chapel organ, paid for from a generous bequest, is too large and loud for the rather small space it is in, and a new chamber organ was being dedicated to offer a gentle alternative. A few former members came back to sing Howells’ Coll Reg Communion setting in the morning, and rather more to do Dyson in D and Stainer’s I Saw the Lord at evensong. We also had tea on the Master’s lawn and a short demonstration recital of the new organ thrown in. Still Pimm’s after Evensong in summer, though not the legendary ‘choir strength’ Pimm’s of my day, the result of the serving staff leaving us to mix our own drinks. It was a shame no one else from my time was there, and if another reunion is organised (as is quite likely) I will try to round up a few contemporaries. It was good though to see the two kneelers I made still going strong. And somewhere along the way I volunteered to do a history of the choir, at least as far back as my student days, probably in the form of a timeline.

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The Bath Festival 2018 – 2

Posted on June 6, 2018 by vhk10

My husband went to a couple of concerts in the Bath Festival, both given by performers who clearly enjoyed what they were doing.

Roman Rabinovich did a cycle of Haydn sonatas at St Michael’s Church. These were good performances given in a plain unshowy style on a modern piano. They were at a rather unusual time – mid-morning on weekdays, with coffee served. He gave brief spoken introductions to the sonatas, commenting that he felt Haydn was underrated. He played off a tablet with a scan of the score which scrolled to the right place as he played – even going back for a repeat! It must have been carefully coordinated with the speed of his playing (or possibly controlled by a page-turner planted in the audience or offstage?)

Roderick Williams’ Schwanengesang in the Assembly Rooms was excellent – he took more notice of the audience than Lieder singers often do. Some interpreters are quite harsh on, for example, Der Doppelgänger; Williams was more lyrical. Iain Burnside’s accompaniment was thoughtful and unobtrusive. The only criticism was that the pitch might have been slightly higher than optimal for him.

The only other part of the Festival I was involved with was the ‘Party in the City’ which this year was a couple of days in. My church hosted some groups, for the first time and after dropping some flyers there I went off to the school’s annual bash at Green Park Station.

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The Bath Festival 2018 – 1

Posted on June 5, 2018 by vhk10

It really is just the Bath Festival now, having amalgamated music and literature. I retain an open mind about this, though I know many people felt that either the literature side or the musical one would suffer. For me it is a return to an earlier phase of the Festival’s history when it included many different sorts of events. Fifty Festivals by Tim Bullamore tells the story of the Festival till the mid-1990s, and to judge by the couple of sample chapters online, it isn’t just in recent years that there have been crises, funding shortages, and changes of direction. I’d love to get my hands on a second-hand copy of this book.

We managed three concerts between us in 2018’s Festival. I went to hear Lars Vogt play Beethoven’s piano concertos no. 1 and 5 with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, directing them from the keyboard. He was seated with his back to the audience, and when he was not actually playing stood up to conduct the longer purely orchestral passages, and remained seated for the shorter ones. It was a remarkable achievement (he had played the other three concertos the previous evening, too). Some ‘gathering notes’ and occasional slight raggedness could be attributed to the absence of a separate conductor, but there was a corresponding gain in that the soloist could impose his interpretation directly on the orchestra. We have all heard concerto performances where conductor and soloist seemed to be at odds with one another.

The Assembly Rooms were almost full, and I was sitting near the back where it was easy to hear (in fact the balance of soloist and orchestra might have been at its best here) but the chairs not so well padded. The hot weather did affect the tuning of the winds from time to time. But I appreciated the book display in the circular hall outside – a benefit of the literature side of the Festival.

I’ll continue our concert reports in another post.

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