3 Choirs (3): Elijah

Posted on July 29, 2016 by vhk10

It’s a long time since the only previous occasion I sang Elijah. As I’ve already remarked, I remembered more of it than I expected to, but there’s still an awful lot of it. (I do wonder whether it might be improved by a cut or two; the practice is acceptable for Messiah and The Creation). Like The Kingdom, it has a rather episodic plot, with incidents such as the raising of the widow’s son being fitted in before we move on to the next event.

We were conducted by Peter Nardone from Worcester, hitherto familiar to me as the composer of some pieces we do in church; in the interval of a rehearsal I was able to catch him and ask him how to pronounce the title of one of them. The title rôle was sung by Sir Willard White, and this was the first time I’d shared a concert platform with him. Also as far as I know the first time I’ve performed to British royalty (I certainly sang for Prince Naruhito of Japan when I was at Merton) as Prince Charles was in the audience. I was glad to be surrounded by singers who were very familiar with the work, which has been quite a Three Choirs staple over the years.

The evening had an unhappy conclusion when the car blew a tyre as we were travelling back on the M5. After nearly 3 hours on the hard shoulder, two of which were spent waiting for assistance, we got in at 3.30 a.m. (My day had started at 6.30 a.m. as there was a rehearsal at 9.) Perhaps the equivalent of the wilderness, but without the angels or ravens.

Review in Seen and Heard International

Posted in singing in concerts | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

3 Choirs (2): The Kingdom

Posted on July 27, 2016 by vhk10

First up was The Kingdom, a work new to me, though in recent years it seems to have gained in popularity.

I think I will always in general prefer earlier Elgar to later works, and so this piece hasn’t overtaken Gerontius in my affections. There are many fine passages, but, perhaps inevitably given the libretto, it is episodic. Elgar compensates for this by using leitmotifs, and in particular I spotted fragments of The Spirit of the Lord (the opening of The Apostles and often performed separately as a church anthem) all over the place.

If you don’t already believe that God is an Englishman, The Kingdom will do its best to persuade you. To dispel any tendency to stolidity, some of the tempi chosen were very fast. I put more work into this outside rehearsals than into any of the other pieces, and it needed it.

The reviews focused on 18-year-old Magnus Walker’s standing in as tenor soloist. He did brilliantly, but I’d like to pay tribute to something they haven’t mentioned: the consideration of the other soloists in balancing his voice in the quartets and other ensembles.

Reviews:
Seen and Heard International
The Arts Desk
Music and Vision Daily

Posted in singing in concerts | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

3 Choirs (1): the opening service

Posted on July 24, 2016 by vhk10

The opening day of the Festival finally arrived, the first event being the opening service. This was one of those occasions where the processions of dignitaries (which included some truly spectacular civic headgear) are an important part of the ceremony. I lost count of the number of bishops who attended!

We sang hymns, including a couple of descants. These included I vow to Thee my Country which I think I have only now sung about three times in my life, despite going to a lot of fairly traditional churches. Also the more inspiring version of the last verse of Jerusalem the Golden (‘Exult, O dust and ashes!’) replaced the rather dull doxology which was originally printed with the descant. (Both texts are in fact drawn from Neale’s translation of Bernard of Cluny’s hymn.) The National Anthem was prefaced by a civic fanfare by Elgar (who else?), which managed to inject a note of melancholy into even this usually triumphal musical genre.

Our anthems were God is gone up and Walton’s Coronation Te Deum; I’d never sung the latter before. The latter piece required a lot of concentration and watching (where this was possible). I’m told that at one point my mug was featured in closeup on the large screens which relay pictures of the performers around the Cathedral, so I’d better look good in other performances this week in case it happens again.

Afterwards there was a photoshoot in the cloisters as we took in the news that our tenor soloist for the evening concert had pulled out.

News report from Gloucestershire Live

Posted in singing at services | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

what has this blog achieved & a shocking admission about Bath

Posted on July 20, 2016 by vhk10

It’s now a significant anniversary of when I moved to Bath, and I’m looking back on how this blog (which I’ve kept for most of that time) has fitted in. Has it achieved what I hoped for, apart from the main purpose of recording musical events which I participate in or attend?

In the early days I hoped the blog might prod particular people into action. This worked in some cases, where Cathedrals had been slow in responding to requests to come as a visiting choir. It was a rather less successful with choir directors. One didn’t want me to blog about his choir at all, even neutral comments about repertoire. I think the reason was that he wanted ‘branding’ to come only from a select group of founder members. I was dropped abruptly from the choir soon afterwards without a reason. Another was cross that I’d written about the reason I’d left her choir, and disputed my account, although I was able to confirm my version (a number of other choir members were more understanding about why I had felt upset enough to leave). Another thought it was rude that I’d mentioned that I was still on a waiting list for auditions with him. My feeling is that if it’s all right to leave someone rotting on a waiting list, it’s also all right to say in public that this is happening to you. I think all three reactions show a lack of ‘people skills’ (a subject for another post?) but I’ve become more circumspect about what I say since then.

In any case, cyberspace is much more crowded now and I don’t expect that any given person is likely to read what I write. I don’t get many comments added to the blog, but I do know it gets read because people tell me. (For example, several people in Bristol Choral Society have discovered it, though I’ve never mentioned it to anyone.) The sort of feedback I get is that it’s better written than the average blog, and the posts which have generated most interest are those about the general local musical scene, such as those relating to the running of the Bath Festival.

So I’ve a request, really aimed at Bathonians who already know me. I have found Bath, as a place to live, distinctly lacking in hospitality. It is startling (and shocks people from elsewhere) that we, a professional couple, have lived here for two decades and never been invited to sit down and eat a meal in anyone else’s house here in all that time. If you find what I have to say interesting (and if you don’t, you wouldn’t have read this far), perhaps you would consider it also interesting across a dinner table or at a drinks party?

Posted in category-defying | 1 Comment

Prom 2: Bryn sings Boris

Posted on July 19, 2016 by vhk10

After a busy day of 3 Choirs rehearsal at Gloucester Cathedral I leapt on a train to London and we went to hear Boris Godunov, with pretty much the same cast as was in the cinema relay of the ROH production.

My observations made earlier about the cast still hold.  This was the first time I’d been to an opera at the Proms.  We didn’t get a programme, which would have given us the libretto. Although if I’d had one, I’m not sure I’d have wanted to use it much, as I wouldn’t have liked adjusting my gaze from the singers to the libretto and back again.

This was semi-staged, so the costumes survived but not the props (we would have found the warrant which is referred to in the tavern scene a useful accessory) or the staging.  In some ways this was an advantage as we lost the repeated re enactment of Dmitri’s murder. The chorus sang from the choir seating so one just had to imagine them moving among the principals.

I was rather tired from my long day, but appreciated hearing live what I’d already experienced in the cinema.  It was the first time I’d sat in one of the boxes in the Albert Hall.

Posted in going to concerts, going to operas | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

the Festival Choir on the road

Posted on July 14, 2016 by vhk10

Most of the Three Choirs Festival rehearsals are on home territory in Gloucester, but there are a couple of away fixtures at the other two cities.  First up was Worcester, which I had to drive all the way to as I missed the coach (and failed to head it off at Tewkesbury).  The rehearsal was in the ‘big room’, and I couldn’t help noticing how comfortable and solid the staging was.  In my time I’ve sat on some rather rickety temporary staging; I recall being on the extreme top corner of a fragile setup singing Gerontius in Ely, and Bristol Cathedral’s is rather gappy in places.  Memo to Cathedrals: get your staging from whoever supplies Worcester’s.

I did make the coach to Hereford, and enjoyed the ride through rolling countryside.  We rehearsed at the Cathedral School, in a building which was once a telephone exchange.  I imagined the room as it might have been once, full of machinery and cables.  There must be lots of former telephone exchanges around as they take up much less space than they used to.

Posted in festivals | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

the themes of the Festival

Posted on July 8, 2016 by vhk10

I’ve been a bit quiet recently. Most of my singing activity has been rehearsing for the 3 Choirs Festival, and what goes on in the rehearsal room stays in the rehearsal room, or at any rate doesn’t appear here. I’ve also been doing some negotiating in connexion with another choir I have sung in, which I’m not going to discuss online.

One side-effect of performing six major works (plus some bits and pieces in the opening service) all in one go is thinking about how they play off against one another and what they have in common. Berlioz and Mahler, for example, as well as sharing a taste for the gargantuan, have a way of doing really profound things with apparently trite melodies (no shortage of those in Carmina Burana either). How do Elgar and Mahler tackle the theme of the Holy Spirit? What about the way Elgar and Mendelssohn deal with setting Biblical stories? How do Vaughan Williams and Berlioz depict lamentation? Where can you trace the influence of plainsong in Elgar and Berlioz? Any significance in the fact that three of our composers are of Jewish descent? It will be interesting to ponder these sorts of questions with all the pieces in close juxtaposition.

Posted in repertoire | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Gloucester’s best kept secret

Posted on June 19, 2016 by vhk10

Junction 11a of the M5 is one of the more mysterious bits of the British motorway network. Leaving the motorway there to drive into Gloucester is straightforward enough but try finding the junction starting from Gloucester and it is a different matter. Road signs are coy about admitting that it exists, and, should you succeed in finding the way there, instead of the usual roundabout and gentle slip road you are spun in a tight counter-clockwise three-quarter turn in order to continue your journey south.

It has a certain similarity to the Kalmus scores of Mahler 8 that we are using. You might have thought that following the soprano line in choir 1 might be straightforward, but that is far from being the case. One moment you are sailing along at the top of the system, but move on a page and your line is buried under a pile of assorted soloists and kiddies, or gone altogether, only to reappear in the middle system a few pages later. To add to the gaiety of nations we 2nd sopranos have had a few alto titbits tossed in our direction for balance reasons. Usually I don’t mark up a score with anything heavier than pencil, but this is an extreme case, and I’ve bought some translucent adhesive strips in assorted colours to pick out my line. I haven’t done it for every single line – if I can’t locate the start of the Chorus Mysticus I don’t deserve to be called a singer of Mahler – but I’ve marked most of them, colour-coding a warm orange for the alto bits. I’ve also written ‘tacet’ in pencil at the top of all the pages where I don’t sing anything.

image
As this is the Internet, here’s a picture of some cake, made by me for yesterday’s all-day rehearsal when my newly highlighted score got its first outing:

This is the second time in as many years that I’m singing in a performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. Last year was good preparation – not least because I’m no longer frightened of fast tempi in this piece – but I’m now singing second soprano in the first choir rather than first soprano in the second choir. There are a few things about the rehearsals last year that I rather fondly miss: Gavin’s way of giving upper-voice cues in falsetto for example. But one thing they have in common: both sets of rehearsals have been blessed with a superb standard of accompaniment. The Gloucester contingent is Choir 1, while our Hereford and Worcester counterparts make up Choir 2, so when we rehearse separately there’s a Choir 2-shaped hole. Saturday was the first time we had Choir 2 with us and I could look back on all the bits I sang last year with a certain amount of nostalgia.

Posted in repertoire | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

the Chantry Singers reunion

Posted on June 19, 2016 by vhk10

The Chantry Singers disbanded in autumn 2010. A couple of years ago there was a reunion, and as it was a success they had another one – in the meantime I’d got myself added to the invitation list as a former member of the choir. I wasn’t in fact in the Chantry Singers all that long – two separate periods of time adding up to about four years, most recently in 2004 – and you will look for me in vain on any choir photos. But the choir had quite a slow turnover (much less, for example, than non-founder members of the Exultate Singers), and a reunion is more likely to attract those who were part of the choir for a long time, so I recognised almost all of the people present. Talking to a former committee member, I realised that I probably left at the wrong time, as soon afterwards its organisation was reformed so that the choir was no longer slightly expanded or slightly reduced for some concerts (it did continue to include the occasional ‘bumper’ though).

We rehearsed assorted mostly sacred pieces and performed most of them at the end. This provided (like the recent rehearsal of Elijah) further evidence that once I’ve sung a piece I never totally forget it. Among the pieces were Lennox Berkeley’s Missa Brevis and Haec dies by Donati. I did the Berkeley a couple of times as a student and the Donati just once, even earlier, and yet once I started singing them I recognised both. Unfortunately while I don’t totally forget pieces (with the possible exception of some totally unmemorable ones) I don’t remember them perfectly either. There were some other pieces that were new to me: part of Josquin’s Missa de Beata Virgine, Victoria’s Dum complerentur, Peter Philips’ Gaudent in caelis, (surprisingly) Byrd’s O Lord make thy servant Elizabeth, Les fleurs et les arbres by Saint-Saëns, and more recently Ave Verums by Paul Mealor and Philip Stopford.

Posted in choirs, singing - other | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bach cello suites at the Festival

Posted on June 16, 2016 by vhk10

Philip Higham played all six Bach cello suites in three lunchtime concerts and between us we got to all of them. The venues were scattered around the city centre: Argyle St URC church, St Swithin’s and the Masonic Hall.

This was an impressive achievement as all three recitals were given from memory and the suites were fluently and expressively played. But comparing notes we both found that the performances were a little too soothing and lacking in drama. It was also rather disappointing that there weren’t more people there – I noticed some notable local Bach enthusiasts were absent. The Festival has some way to go to regain the popularity it once had.

Posted in going to concerts | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

an organist’s wedding and two Festival concerts

Posted on June 9, 2016 by vhk10

There was just too much going on on May 21st. I had been due to sing a concert in Reading but asked to be released from it when I realised there were enough sopranos and some unrepeatable events going on in Bath. Among these was the wedding of a former organist to a current choir member at my church. Surprisingly, I’ve only once before sung at the wedding of an organist (I have attended three such events, but a professional singer was hired at one). It has the advantage that you are guaranteed quality music, at a time when I am now selective about which weddings I sing at. Though I don’t expect many grooms sit down at the console shortly before the entry of the bride and play the Radetsky March, as happened here.

In the meantime my husband went to hear the Navarra Quartet at the Guildhall in the International Music Festival. They played Haydn’s Op. 76 no. 1, followed by the third quartet of Peteris Vasks. This latter was enjoyable though not particularly groundbreaking. Then they moved on to Beethoven’s Op. 131. This they did justice to without being outstanding, with distinctive but blended tone. One visual trick was missed: because the viola player sat between the violinists, a phrase that was surely intended to move from one player to their neighbour instead jumped around.

Later in the afternoon he went to hear Nicholas Mulroy sing Die Schöne Müllerin accompanied by Alisdair Hogarth. To begin with the piano was too loud, and then slightly over-corrected and became unobtrusive. The performance was acted as well as sung, coming over well, although at one point a mispronunciation destroyed a rhyme in the lyrics (at which point the singer noticed what he’d done).

Both concerts were rather thinly attended and the Festival is presumably trying to attract back the audiences that it has lost in recent years. Certainly the programme this year featured plenty of classical concerts.

Other events on this busy day included a school fair (which I went to) and a pamper evening (which I had to miss), and I’m sure there were other things too.

Posted in festivals, going to concerts, singing at services | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

20th anniversary

Posted on June 1, 2016 by vhk10

It’s our 20th wedding anniversary this month – so who from 1996 remains on the local musical scene? (Strictly speaking, I didn’t arrive in Bath till late August, but I started investigating choirs before I moved here.)

In Bath, we have Peter King as organist of the Abbey (but he’s about to retire), Keith Bennett still conducts the Paragon Singers (but hands them over at the end of the year), and Nigel Perrin is in charge of the City of Bath Bach Choir. On the orchestral front, Jason Thornton conducts the Bath Philharmonia, though they are now a professional group. I’d be interested to hear of anyone else still waving their arms in front of the same group of people. [The DoM at my church points out that he will have been in post 20 years, at the end of this year.]

I’m less sure about Bristol, as I didn’t really have contact with its musical scene for the first few years I was in the area. But one piece of continuity is that John Marsh still directs the Lord Mayor’s Chapel choir, having taken over 20 years ago, as a retirement post! (Sadly his predecessor died just as he was giving up the job.)

In that time some choirs have disbanded: the Chantry Singers, the Bath Festival Chorus and the Brandon Hill Singers for example. I also note that I’ve been waiting to sing with some local groups for almost as long as I’ve lived in Bath. I went on a waiting list for auditions with the Paragon Singers in 1998 and although I’ve been on the dep list for the Lord Mayor’s Chapel for 20 years I’ve never been asked to sing with them or with the Lord Mayor’s Chapel Singers. When 3 Choirs folk ask me ‘why are you singing with a choir so far from where you live?’ I sometimes point out that this is what happened when I tried locally.

Posted in choirs | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment