a memorial concert

Posted on November 2, 2015 by vhk10

We had a particular involvement in Bristol Choral Society’s Verdi Requiem in Colston Hall with the British Sinfonietta, as we contributed to the cost in memory of my late father-in-law. I was singing, and in fact this was the first time I’d done a fully rehearsed performance since I was an undergraduate, though I did do a Come and Sing one a few years ago.

I didn’t find it hard to reacquaint myself with the work, though I identified a couple of bars which I think I learnt incorrectly all those years ago. In performance, I was slightly displaced from my usual location as the 2nd sopranos were behind rather than beside the 1sts. In fact I was largely surrounded by altos.

The rest of the family were in the audience and felt it was a memorable tribute. We were all particularly impressed by our soprano soloist, Claire Rutter. The fire imagery was particularly vivid as earlier in the week a hall of residence a few doors down from Colston had been partly gutted.

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The Bath Magazine features choirs

Posted on October 29, 2015 by vhk10

@thebathmagazine
We receive a free magazine ‘The Bath Magazine’ every month. (The other similar publication ‘Bath Life’ has changed its distribution – ‘it comes down to numbers’ is what I was told – and is no longer delivered to our street. Or perhaps they were put off by the garden paths round here.)

The November 2015 edition of the Bath Magazine contains an lengthy (seven-page) feature about local choirs. They’ve obviously gone to quite a lot of trouble to talk to people and assemble photos and information about a couple of dozen choirs in the city. Apart from Bath Abbey choir, they aren’t church choirs (I can think of only two other C of E churches in Bath that have a choir singing in four parts every week). There are four choirs that I’ve sung with among them. I can see some omissions: Paragon Singers and Chandos Singers, for example. I haven’t read the article yet, but it looks like a good promotion for the choral life of Bath.

(For those who don’t live in a delivery area, The Bath Magazine can also be picked up free just inside the entrance to Waitrose and a few other places. Many local cafés and shops also have copies lying around.)

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Two concerts in Bath churches

Posted on October 16, 2015 by vhk10

I’ve recently been to a couple of enjoyable short concerts where I knew the performers. In Manvers Street Baptist Church, I heard Sara Foster work her way through the year with ‘A Song for All Seasons’, accompanied by Colin Hunt. Then I heard Kingswood School’s choirs sing in St Stephen’s Lansdown. Well done to all performers.

Both churches are handsome ones, with interesting memorial tablets commemorating such people as missionaries executed in China and a sailor whose ship never reached port and who lies in ‘unknown waters’. I think I prefer the Baptist church as a concert venue. They have a regular Thursday lunchtime concert series with a collection for a charity at the end. Sara and Colin performed alongside a large collection of crocheted and appliquéd owls which were something to do with the church’s harvest festival.

At St Stephen’s I was obliged to find a seat in the gallery (just at the west end, not on three sides as in St Swithin’s or Christ Church). This was not the short straw, as I think the acoustic there is better than downstairs. Although you still have the problem of nearby conversation sounding louder than it should, it is not nearly as loud as it sounds in the body of the church. And the conductor could talk easily to us in the gallery without amplification – but perhaps that is because he is a teacher.

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I sell my soul to the Three Choirs Festival

Posted on October 7, 2015 by vhk10

About a month ago I auditioned for the chorus for the Three Choirs Festival 2016, to be held in Gloucester, and have now heard that I have got in. It’s a big commitment for three months, and people from the Festival’s Artistic Director down have been surprised at my willingness to undertake the amount of travel involved. (I’m still working out how to get to Hereford for a Monday evening, but I’m sure a way will be found.) My answer is broadly fivefold:

  1. It’s not quite as hard to get between Bath and Gloucester as people think, especially if you start from the north side of Bath. Not really any harder than getting to Gloucester from (say) southern parts of Bristol.
  2. Bath lacks the venues for major choral works. The Abbey isn’t quite large enough, the Forum is not designed as a concert hall, and Wells Cathedral has posed practical problems for choirs in recent years.
  3. No invidious comparisons of choirmasters/conductors, but since the demise of the Bath Festival Chorus a decade ago it’s got hard to find an opportunity to perform with outfits of the calibre of the Philharmonia round here, at least if you’re not in the Bath Camerata.
  4. I know several people who do more extreme musical commutes: from Cumbria to a choir based in Reading, or from western Wiltshire to London.
  5. the pull of the music was just too strong. It comprises:
    • two works I adore singing, both of which I happen to have done recently
    • a piece I sang as a student, but haven’t done since
    • a piece I tried to sing a few years ago, but the programme was changed
    • a piece I’ve hitherto spent my musical life avoiding
    • a piece I don’t know at all
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More luxury casting at the ROH

Posted on October 7, 2015 by vhk10

Others in the family went to see Le Nozze di Figaro at the Royal Opera House, and came back with good reports. The only slight reservation was about the orchestra being a little lacking in colour compared with the singing, which was uniformly good. (A criticism which occured to us also after our last visit). Special mention to Ann Murray as Marcellina.

The production emphasised the broad comedy rather than the social comment. Here’s a review from the Guardian here.

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Note-bashing with YouTube

Posted on September 28, 2015 by vhk10

I frequently turn to YouTube to help me learn unfamiliar church music repertoire; even if I already have a recording, it’s often easier to reach for an online performance than trying to locate it on a CD or cassette tape.

It’s quite a hit and miss exercise, however. If I haven’t got the music yet, the best find is one of those videos where the score scrolls past as the music plays. Failing that, a well-made recording of a quality performance can be very useful. While these may be available for some really obscure pieces, there are other standard repertoire ones which aren’t represented on YouTube at all.

Then again, some YouTube videos can be less than helpful. There’s no shortage of badly recorded, out of tune performances which I will not make it to the end of. My personal nadir was the clip of a jokey encore piece I sang recently. The only performance on YouTube was a rather heavy-handed one by a German choir, in a mixture of German and strongly accented English, which bore out all the stereotypes of Germans not understanding our humour.

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a Bairstow and Stanford-fest

Posted on September 21, 2015 by vhk10

I took part in the latter part of the Cathedral Chamber Choir’s visit to York Minster. (Rather annoyingly, this meant that I missed meeting the Precentor, a college friend of mine).

The visit was a little subdued because one of the organisers of this choir had died a few weeks previously. The services I sang in were dominated by the music of two composers: Bairstow and Stanford. At least the Bairstow loony did not reappear to claim that he cause the First World War. And sadly the charmingly mad Lord Bicester (and that really was his title) died at the turn of the year.

Our Communion setting was put together from Stanford’s ‘Coronation’ Gloria (a large-scale setting previously unknown to me) and his Communion in G. The latter is at partly reconstituted from other pieces; the Benedictus comes from the Nunc in G, which we’d sung the previous day, and the Agnus from another source (responses to the Commandments, perhaps?). Then at Mattins came the old faithful Canticles in B flat (I sang the verse part in the Te Deum).

As at our last visit, we sang Bairstow’s Blessed City (the entry I used to find a problem has now been nailed thanks to some memorising) and at Mattins I sat down under his shadow. Another piece which reappeared was the Magnificat of Gibbons’ Short Service, as well as canticles by Wood (Coll. Reg. this time).

Other music new to me during my time on the tour was Tye’s Nunc Dimittis (I can’t think why this isn’t more of a repertoire piece) and Vast ocean of light by Jonathan Dove, whom we’re beginning to specialise in after doing another piece of his last year. This came together nicely in performance, despite the lack of rehearsal with the organ (as at St George’s earlier this summer; we never rehearsed the morning canticles with organ at all).

Visiting choirs at York are now rather more restricted in what they can do. Unusually, we could only use one setting of the Responses during our week (it was Clucas) and we didn’t sing Psalm 150 in procession after the Eucharist. I noticed that York has joined Liverpool in installing a lift (down to the crypt); unfortunately this obscures a carved angel holding a tablet commemorating the restoration of the song school. I hope that the angel will be liberated and moved to where she can be seen properly. I hope also that it won’t be too long before I’m back, maybe on a Priory Voices weekend.

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a change of Musical Director

Posted on September 10, 2015 by vhk10

Bristol Choral Society is advertising for a new Musical Director, as Adrian Partington is stepping down after fifteen years in the post. Further details may be found here.

There are a lot of local changes going on, as Bath Camerata has recently changed director and I’m told that the Paragon Singers are shortly going to do so. In each case the MD is or has been there for a couple of decades. I’m not sure who will hold the record for longest tenure round here after they are replaced, though if you include church choirs Peter King and John Marsh have some claim.

The transition to a new director can be a tricky time, as anyone who was in the Brandon Hill Singers may recall.

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Three Proms

Posted on September 10, 2015 by vhk10

Between us we went to three Promenade concerts. Firstly Prom 9 – the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Leif Ove Andsnes conducting and playing Beethoven’s 1st and 4th piano conceros and Stravinsky’s Apollon Musagète, which went down well with those in the family who went.

Later we went to Prom 18 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Semyon Bychkov, sat as high as one can without being in the gallery. The programme began with the Lebècque sisters playing the K365 double concerto. We had an almost overhead view of the two pianos (otherwise our view was rather restricted); a rather baffling encore turned out to be by Philip Glass. Then came the Leningrad Symphony. This goes in and out of favour, but for all its ramblings I’m very attached to it. This particular performance had a great sense of stillness in the quiet passages, but also sustained the huge spans.

Finally, some of us went to hear the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Peter Oundjian in Prom 63. This began with Messiaen’s Hymne, an early piece very much in mystical Catholic mode. Then Igor Levit in Mozart’s K595 piano concerto. He had a curious hunched performing posture, but gave a pleasing performance, though one of our party found it rather mannered. Finally came Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. We have heard some great Bruckner at the Proms – including what turned out to be Günter Wand’s final appearance – and this performance stood up well, dispelling any doubts as to whether the brass in particular would do it justice.

Reviews of Prom 18:

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at the home of the Garter

Posted on August 31, 2015 by vhk10

It was a long time since I’d sung at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle – previous visits were quite social affairs with a drinks party for us in the conference centre next to the Chapel. This time the Erleigh Cantors had heightened security, having to give personal details in advance and show ID if we came in individually. The rehearsal room for visiting choirs is still the former dungeon, which isn’t as oppressive as it sounds, although you can still see where the cell doors used to be.

We had a busy schedule (especially for me, having sung Mahler 8 the day before) with three services on the Sunday (we were allowed to sing Elgar’s Te Deum at Matins). But we got only very short snippets of psalmody (as do the Chapel’s own choir) – because of the presumed attention span of tourists? [I’m told that isn’t the reason, but also that it was only a short-term policy]

I’d sung some of our repertoire (Pärt Magnificat, Chilcott Downing Canticles, Purcell I will sing Unto the Lord) for the same conductor earlier in the year, but one new piece was Francis Jackson’s Missa Matris Dei, a large-scale setting written for Farm Street Church, which was new to all of us. There were some very characteristic phrases, with leaps of fourths and slightly modal harmony. I also had not sung Gretchaninov’s Nunc Dimittis before.

There was an Ascensiontide feel to some of the music with Maurice Greene’s O Clap your Hands (transposed up a tone) and Patrick Gowers’ Viri Galilæi. Gowers’s son Tim, a distinguished (Fields Medallist) mathematician, is slightly known to me and in fact was a guest at our engagement party, Perhaps the mathematical connection explains the particularly complicated way in which the score of Viri Galilæi represents duple time, and the 18/4 time signature at one point.

For the record, the other pieces were the Tunnard Responses, Sing Joyfully by Byrd and Britten’s Jubilate in C.

The Chapel is of course strongly associated with the Order of the Garter, with rows of elaborately coiffed helmets behind the choir stalls. If they ever strip anyone of the honour and reinstate the ceremony, it would be good to be invited back for the occasion (provided the choir was seated elsewhere). According to Wikipedia ‘While the Garter King of Arms read out aloud the Instrument of Degradation, a herald climbed up a ladder and removed the former knight’s banner, crest, helm, and sword, throwing them down into the quire. Then the rest of the heralds kicked them down the length of the chapel, out of the doors, and into the castle ditch.’* Now that’s what I call liturgy!

[*October 2025: all they did for Prince Andrew was discreetly remove his banner. A missed opportunity.]

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Dibble-Dibble. . . GUSTAV!!

Posted on August 27, 2015 by vhk10

In the immortal words of Leif Segerstam. I don’t know whether he was talking about Mahler 8, but it seems an appropriate response.

At last, an opportunity came round to perform this again. It didn’t work out quite as planned, because my attempt to travel to Poole to sing in the performance conducted by Gavin Carr failed. However I was able to arrange to sing instead in the second performance in Exeter Cathedral conducted by Philip Mackenzie.

I rehearsed the work with Bath Minerva Choir and we joined forces with members of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, some of whom joined us for a rehearsal in Saltford before a big joint rehearsal near Bournemouth. The chorus was not huge and so a lot of the ‘scaled-down’ subsections of it in part 2 were sung by all of us. As I was singing in choir 2 this time, there was a lot of new music to learn.

Our orchestra were the young professionals of the Amadeus orchestra. The children’s chorus (and you know it’s getting really serious in this symphony when they come in – it’s a bit like the xylophone in a symphony by Shostakovich) were the BSO youth choir.

I had to do something I’d never done before, which would have come naturally to many organists: follow the conductor on a screen (direct view was blocked by a pillar). This was tricky at first because of having to watch a two-dimensional object not a 3-dimensional one, but by the performance I’d got used to it. The system has the possible advantage that the conductor can’t see you or glare at you.

I’ve done so many great works with Gavin and it was a shame not to sing this under his baton, but it was not second best to sing the Exeter performance only – I’m told by people who sang in both that each had its merits. Exeter Cathedral more or less sold out in what space we left for the audience.

I hope it won’t be too long before I get to sing this again. I still find the words of Part II a bit hard to take – all that business with floating hermits and so on – and the chorus part of Part II is very fragmented, but there’s really nothing else like this work.

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Bostridge on Winterreise

Posted on August 18, 2015 by vhk10

We went to hear a postponed talk by Ian Bostridge in a local church, connected to his new book on Winterreise. He talked in general terms about the work’s history and his own performance history of it, and then expanded his thoughts on a few of the songs: their structure, mood and influence. I was interested to learn that the poems in the second half of the cycle were written after Schubert had set the first half; Schubert declined to insert settings of these poems in between those he had already composed, which may account for the disjointed narrative of the second half of the cycle.

There were just a few questions at the end. An inherent danger with post-talk question-and-answer sessions is that they get taken over by people who like the sound of their own voices, and talk at length before allowing the speaker to make a short reply. A particular hazard when many in the audience are singers!

The evening was also a fine assembly of Bath’s musical great and good, and a chance to catch up with chatting to a few of them.

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