My husband went to prop up ENO’s bank balance and see their production of Carmen, as he happened to be in London.
Vocally it was good, with Michaela as the pick of the bunch. The main problems he had centred on Escamillo. Firstly, the production was set in around the late 1950’s and this didn’t jar too much, except when he appeared in full toreador rig. And despite his singing, it was rather hard to understand what Carmen might have found attractive about him.
The final concert of Bristol Choral Society’s season, in the Cathedral, was largely music connected to Bristol. (Incidentally I had my triennial audition, and can continue to sing.)
Bristol does not feature very largely on the map of British composers. Our concert had something in common with a rather similar one I once performed in with the Brandon Hill Singers in St. Mary Redcliffe: a substantial work by Samuel Wesley. This time it was Exultate Deo, which blossomed when given space in the generous Cathedral acoustic. (I don’t think I’d have wanted to have met Samuel Wesley, and I think he might well have been in trouble with Operation Yewtree had he lived closer to our own time). The evening opened with a zippy setting of Psalm 150 by David Bednall, who accompanied, and later played an improvisation. We sang the rather pleasant opening of Pearsall’s Requiem mass, a work which perhaps deserves rather more exposure as it would be a useful standby for church choirs; I’d never even heard of it. One piece had a more personal connexion, Raymond Warren’s A new thing, as I was at university with his daughter and am still in occasional contact; it was also written for and dedicated to a member of the choir. The half ended with a warhorse of cathedral music, O how glorious is the kingdom by Harwood.
The second half featured Vaughan Williams – folk-song arrangements, ‘Linden Lea’ and Julia Hwang playing The Lark Ascending, with piano accompaniment. We ended with three items from the ‘Encores for Choirs’ book: Good Hope which combines words from various African languages (clicks and all), a 3-minute condensed version of the Messiah and finally an arrangement of ‘Every time I feel the Spirit’.
St. Mary’s Bathwick is beginning a fundraising campaign for its organ (I think this is at least the third such campaign since I’ve been in Bath). It’s a Willis, and still at old Philharmonic pitch, which makes some performers baulk at tuning to it.
Joel Cooper and Shean Bowers presented a concert of popular classics for trumpet and/or organ. Strictly speaking trumpet and cornet – a piccolo trumpet was also on display for the audience to look at. We got a mixture of trumpet originals (Clarke’s voluntary), arrangements (e.g. Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, where we wisely were given only one verse), and some pieces for organ alone.
Long-term readers of this blog will know that I long for the Bath Festival Chorus to be revived. I was asked for my thoughts by another interested party and here they are, edited slightly in the interests of diplomacy:
The original Bath Festival Chorus existed in the earlier years of the Festival under Menuhin. It was revived in 1992 by Nigel Perrin and championed by Richard Hickox, performing in the Bath Festival and the Bath Mozartfest as well as giving independent concerts. The core of the membership were members of the Bath Camerata, with invited singers from other choirs in Bath. But in the new millennium its performances grew rarer and its final appearance was in 2005 when it took part in an orchestral concert in the Abbey and a concert of its own conducted by James MacMillan, no less, in Christ Church Julian Rd.
I never sang in the BFC myself, though I was offered a place and turned it down, which I later regretted because the chance to join didn’t come again. So I’m a bit vague about how exactly it worked – actually this vagueness may have been one of the problems with it.
So what went wrong? The following reasons have all occurred to me or been suggested by others:
a) lack of support from Festival organisers. I don’t think Joanna MacGregor had any interest in the BFC when she ran the Festival, and no attempt was made to revive it then. But it was already less of a fixture when she took over. There were also concerns about the choral/orchestral concerts taking risks with a substantial slice of the Festival’s budget.
b) neither the Forum nor the Abbey were ideal venues and the BFC often performed elsewhere such as Wells Cathedral or Clifton Cathedral. But Wells Cathedral became more problematic as a venue, I’m told.
c) Richard Hickox was busy with the BBCNOW, then started spending much of the year in Australia and no longer had time to be involved. Some of us hoped that if he retired to the area he would take up the BFC again, but his death in 2008 put paid to that idea.
d) someone needed to do the admin, with time and energy, as well as the connexions in Bath’s choral world.
e) ‘it was hard to find rehearsal times because every night one or other of Bath’s choirs would be rehearsing’. I’ve been told this but don’t really believe it as the BFC had only a few rehearsals per event, on different nights of the week.
The obstacles. to restarting the choir are rather different from the reasons it wound up in 2005, I think. One is the general shortage of audiences for choral concerts – a serious problem in Bristol at the moment and not unknown in Bath. (My theory for what it’s worth is that there are more choirs around giving concerts, but audiences have not expanded at the same rate.).
I also don’t think it would now be possible to run the choir in the invitation-only way it worked before. These days, such a choir would be expected to have a website and a procedure for applying to join. This and other matters such as music hire would require administration.
There might also be resistance from those who currently sing in Festival choral concerts, when they occur. And it would be essential to have the support of people high up in the organisation of the Bath Festival and/or the Mozartfest.
On the other hand, there is a feeling that the Bath Festival shouldn’t become a festival of chamber music (as nearly happened in 2014), and that other similar festivals (Cheltenham, 3 Choirs etc.) have their own choruses, so why can’t Bath? There certainly are a lot of singers around here, and not all to be found in Bath’s choirs.
I hadn’t sung with Priory Voices since 2013 but the chance came to join them at Canterbury Cathedral. It was nearly taken away again, as the original dates were double booked; fortunately we were able to transfer to the following weekend. This was at the cost of both choir and organist having very restricted rehearsal time (something which has happened on several of my visits to Canterbury), which the Cathedral acknowledged had created difficulties for us.
As at Worcester, we sang Gibbons’ Second Service for Saturday evensong. No complaints here as I think it is my favourite canticle setting. This time we used the edition by Robert King which gives it a (mostly) 2/2 time signature; Fellowes’ 1936 edition has no time signature and this was the first performance I’ve sung in which was beaten in minims. Here it was paired with Great Lord of Lords, a piece of which I know the Amen because it was one of a repertoire of Amens we used to sing at the end of Evensong at one of my former churches.
Canterbury has a rather nice chamber organ which would have suited this music well, but it is now forbidden to visiting choirs because last year another visiting choir dropped it. How do you drop a chamber organ?!
On Sunday we brought out Continental Romantic repertoire for the Eucharist – Widor’s Mass Op 36 and Rossini’s O Salutaris Hostia. For Evensong there was the British equivalent – Wood in E flat no. 2 and that great Trinity warhorse, Stainer’s I saw the Lord.
Canterbury clearly does well out of the tourist trade – well enough to be able to afford to have the heating on even at the end of May (it was definitely needed).
There was more of it this year than last, but in the end we didn’t get to much. As last year, my youngest was involved in a Festival concert, this time ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’, a piece inspired by Alice in Wonderland which was performed in Bath Abbey on the opening night. The children performed with enthusiasm and it was an enjoyable occasion though like a lot of music written for children now the vocal range was a bit low.
Later in the Festival I returned to the Abbey to hear Stile Antico. Disclaimer: I sing for a member of this choir, and I’d been waiting eagerly for them to come to these parts (they did sing at the Wiltshire Music Centre a while back). Their programme was English Tudor church music, both Catholic and Protestant, with most of Byrd’s 5-part mass linking the rest together. The full 12 singers were used in some pieces, including their calling card O Praise the Lord by Tallis, and different combinations of singers were used in different pieces. At one point the sopranos disappeared to sing plainchant interludes in a responsory from the very eastern end of the Abbey.
Over the course of the evening one got to know the sound of the individual voices. There’s a pair of identical twin sopranos, whose voices I could tell apart though I could not do the same for their faces. This is not to say that the voices did not blend together well. The men’s voices have matured since I bought their first recording a decade ago. I also particularly appreciated the purely tuned intervals without the equal-temperament compromise.
The ensemble is noted for performing unconducted, and so their demeanour is rather different from usual choral performance, with the singers glancing frequently across at one another to read body language. I suspect that some final consonants may be been delegated to particular singers rather than being sung by everyone!
It was a superb concert and they have Bath in their pocket. It didn’t quite sell out but I’m sure they will when they return, as I hope they will. The highlight for me was the melancholy of Byrd’s Civitas sancti tui.
The Erleigh Cantors sang a concert in St Peter’s Earley, built around three settings of the Magnificat. Two were settings we’ve trotted out in various Cathedrals: Giles Swayne’s (I have been so well drilled in this that I can now sing it without panicking) and Andrea Gabrieli’s for three choirs. The newish one to me was Arvo Pärt’s; in fact I had been listening to it, thinking what a shame it was that I’d never sung it, the day I was asked to sing in the concert. (My musical memory though had failed me because I did sing it in St Alban’s a few years ago!) It is one of those pieces that sounds deceptively easy, but isn’t, the hard bit being to maintain pitch.
We opened with three anthems by Purcell, including I will sing unto the Lord (another piece I’d never sung) and Jehovah, quam multi sunt hostes mei (with two tenor soloists so Mr Gostling’s low note was edited out). However connoisseurs of low notes got one in our encore, Rachmaninov’s ‘Nunc Dimittis’, to balance all those Magnificats.
Our second half also included James Whitbourn’s ‘Son of God’ Mass, for choir and (in its concert version) saxophone. Our saxophonist Anna O’Brien, was in a little gallery at the far end of the church which worked well as she was not required to play together with the choir. The music occasionally betrays its origins as the background music for a TV series, as well has having the odd Brucknerian moment, but went down well with our audience. By the performance I’d got used to reading the saxophone part and automatically transposing it to get my notes. The audience also enjoyed the closing number of the official programme, Sing!, an arrangement by Jonathan Willcocks of Widor’s toccata where the choir sings some words about God over the organ.
I joined CanZona (replacing a singer with a broken leg) for a concert in Holy Trinity Bradford (on Avon) conducted by David Bishop. I’d never sung in this church before; it has a pleasant acoustic though the chancel is narrow so best suited to small ensembles. The Comper high altar, very similar in design to that of Little St Mary’s in Cambridge, made me feel at home.
I was quite glad I’d just done the Poulenc as it was a demanding programme. We began with Moeran’s Songs of Springtime. I think that they may be only choral pieces by him to get much of an outing these days; even his canticle setting in D – which my Cambridge college choir always used to do on the first evensong of the year – has gone from music lists. I enjoyed most the restrained sections which matched the period of the words, rather than the occasional passages where he tried to be Delius. (I am no fan of real Delius, let alone imitators!)
The Poulenc was a very different experience from the other performance. The orchestra was replaced by David Bednall skilfully drawing a variety of colours from the organ, and that I didn’t find myself missing it. We were a much smaller choir so my contribution was proportionately larger.
Our programme was completed by Malcolm Archer’s Requiem, another piece that was more taxing than it looked at first, as it required a lot of sustained high singing. It mainly recalls French settings of the text, though there was a near-quotation from the War Requiem at one point.
We had a small but appreciative audience and it was good to have a chance to chat to David Bednall (who has crossed my path with several different groups) over tea before the concert.
Some of my family went to see distinguished visitors to Colston Hall – the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek. Josef Špaček was the soloist in two works – Mendelssohn’s violin concerto and that local favourite The Lark Ascending. I wonder whether this piece, so beloved of Classic FM listeners, is much played outside Britain, or whether it had been specially added to the orchestra’s repertoire for this tour. I have more tolerance for it than others in my family (who complain that it goes nowhere), fortunately as I’m singing in another Bristol concert soon in which it’s on the programme.
The heart of the programme however was Dvořák – two Slavonic Dances and the Seventh Symphony (very familiar to me because it was an A level Music set work). My husband reported with some pleasure that the slightly rawer Eastern European brass sound, treasured on our old Supraphon, Hungaroton and Melodiya recordings, is still distinct from that of orchestras elsewhere. And that the playing sounded fresh, despite the dense touring schedule.
The first outing of Poulenc’s Gloria was with Bristol Choral Society and the National Children’s Orchestra in Colston Hall conducted by Howard Williams with Rhiannon Llewellyn as soloist. In fact the NCO run several orchestras, and we performed with the most senior of them. I reflected what a lot of dedication and hard work must go into running these ensembles, with so many auditions and re-auditions.
Apart from the Poulenc, the concert was (mostly) well known pieces that showed off the orchestra’s considerable talents. The concert began with Elgar’s Cockaigne overture and the second half opened with an arrangement of Rachmaninov’s Vocalise for orchestra, the solo part being distributed around various instruments. Then Enesco’s first Romanian Rhapsody, which was ‘staged’ slightly, as groups of performers stood up when their instruments were prominent. The concert concluded with Ravel’s Bolero. I had my usual seat near the percussion (and was interested to find out what a prominent role they had in parts of the Poulenc). However the side-drum player who played throughout the Ravel was placed in the middle of the orchestra. Most impressively, when a second side-drummer (among the percussion) joined him part way through, they were completely in time with one another.
This orchestra deserves an audience beyond the relatives and supporters who I think made up most of it.
We had quite a lot to do this year. On Maundy Thursday we trooped up the hill to sing at the Eucharist at St Stephen’s, which was in the context of an actual meal. I hadn’t sung Bruckner’s Pange lingua for a very long time indeed, yet remembered it perfectly; it was presumably written for a larger acoustic than the church centre where we sang it. We also sang Byrd’s Ave Verum and (later, in church) Ives’ Ubi Caritas, which is a bit more soprano-friendly than the usual Duruflé setting.
Our Good Friday service of music and readings had seven anthems. These included Bairstow’s Lamentations (one of the few pieces by Bairstow I actually like) and Pater meus by the sometime Bath Camerata favourite Antonín Tučapský. A rather simpler piece was Tallis’ Purge me Lord. For something rather more dramatic we had Ireland’s Greater Love in which I did the solo (I think I’ve sung this before, but only as a semi-chorus).
