2014 and 2015’s resolutions

Posted on January 9, 2015 by vhk10

2014 certainly had some very high points – comparable to if not better than the annus mirabilis of 2007.

These include, in approximately chronological order:

  • singing Messiah in Bombay and Goa with the South West Festival Chorus
  • performing the Glagolitic Mass and the Petite Messe Solennelle for the first time*
  • two concerts in the Royal Festival Hall with the Philharmonia Orchestra*
  • performances with the Birmingham Conservatoire Camerata in Wells Cathedral and Cheddar
  • some other lovely Cathedral visits: Southwell, Peterborough, Gloucester, Norwich
  • reacquainting myself with Berlioz’ Grande Messe des Morts*
  • singing Gerontius live on Radio 3*

* all of these with Bristol Choral Society (in some cases joining other choirs)

There were of course downsides to the year. I made a gaffe in one performance of the kind that makes you wish the platform would open and swallow you up. I wasn’t able to sing with Priory Voices (all the dates clashed). The only solo work was intoning plainchant responses at a service in Wells Cathedral (part of the reason for this is my choosing to do more large-choir work).

What is there to look forward to in 2015? I don’t think it’s going to be able to compete with 2014, though at least two of the performances listed above came at short notice so you never know. One piece on my wishlist is coming up shortly: Poulenc’s Gloria just after Easter. There’s a prospect of singing part of Gurrelieder (yes, really) in the summer. ‘Cathedral’ trips include Worcester (as I’m writing this review a little late, I’ve already done this one), Bristol, Canterbury, St. George’s Chapel Windsor, York Minster and St Edmundsbury.

And to work on? Probably my sight-singing, which I know could be better than it is. A rather vaguer ambition is to sing with or for one or two people in the Bath area that I have yet to meet properly. I seem to have fallen off the Bath choral circuit (another consequence of doing large-choir work in Bristol) and would like to have a foothold on it again.

On the concert/opera front, things were a bit quieter, though I got to WNO’s Moses und Aron, and Traviata at the Royal Opera House. Honorable mention to my youngest for singing in a concert at the Bath Festival, though the state of the Festival itself is a cause for concern (however there is news on that front, which I’ll report on separately).

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a new conductor for Bath Camerata

Posted on January 5, 2015 by vhk10

It’s been announced that Nigel Perrin will be standing down as musical director of the Bath Camerata in April this year, and the choir is advertising for a replacement.

I sang for a short time with the Camerata when I first arrived in Bath. At that time the choir was expanding and contracting in size as Nigel Perrin looked for the optimum number of singers. I was dropped because I wasn’t so good on the lighter jazzy repertoire he used (fair comment).

Nevertheless, I was invited back for some concerts where former singers were included, and greatly enjoyed these. I was sorry recently to learn that there won’t be any more because there is now no register of former singers.

It will be interesting to see how the transition is handled. Will the existing singers be loyal to the choir, or will some decide not to sing for the new director of music? I recall with sadness how the Brandon Hill Singers failed to survive a change of conductor. I doubt that this will happen with Bath Camerata, because there aren’t comparable choirs around here that might indulge in a spot of poaching. Will the new musical director decide that they want a change of personnel in the choir? Will the sort of repertoire it performs change? Will the choir perform more often in Bath than it now does, or less? Will it go back to making recordings (I think their last one was a decade ago)? Will there be changes to the way the choir is publicised? And will the new conductor try to revive the Bath Festival Chorus?

It’s hard to imagine Camerata without Nigel, but we’ll see what happens. And I think it’s in general good to have changes on Bath’s choral scene; I remarked back in 2009 that most choral conductors in the city had been in their posts a long time.

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Carol singing on Sion Hill

Posted on January 2, 2015 by vhk10

As I was in Bath this year, I looked for some local door-to-door carol singing to join in but didn’t find any. It’s less common in urban areas than in villages, and in central Bath there is the problem that many buildings are divided into flats; which doorbell do you ring? I know that some happened in Widcombe this year, and there have been carol singers from St Mary’s Bathwick in the past. I decided to organise some of my own, and four of us spent an hour going round Sion Hill, which seemed promising territory with nice views into the bargain. We raised about £50 for MSF’s work treating the Ebola outbreak.

When I’ve done this out in a village, and there’s been someone in, it’s got one of two reactions: either the occupants ignore you, or they open the door, hear you sing and then contribute to your good cause. In Bath you sometimes get a third one; the occupant appears, drops some money in the collection, then gradually shuts the door on you before you have finished singing. This tends to result in a truncated carol as there’s no point in finishing it.

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some new pieces for Advent and Christmas

Posted on January 2, 2015 by vhk10

Our well attended Advent and Christmas carols services brought some new music for me to sing. We made a dramatic entrance at Advent singing ‘Unborn’, the opening of Alec Roth’s oratorio The Traveller. Not often you get a text in Pāli at an Advent carol service!

At Christmas, we learned René Clausen’s Tonight eternity alone, with its vertiginous soprano duet – not explicitly about Christmas night, but the words are appropriate to it. We also had two home-grown pieces. A setting for double choir of Silent Night in English and German (with a bit of The First Nowell thrown in) commemorated the informal Christmas truce of 1914. Our organist set the Shepherd’s Masque a few years ago: a text I hadn’t previously encountered about Jolly Wat the shepherd boy, who offers baby Jesus everything – even his tar box!

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‘a passionate and sensitive interpretation’

Posted on December 13, 2014 by vhk10

The following Saturday I returned to another work I performed earlier this autumn, The Dream of Gerontius in Colston Hall. Again we had new soloists (ours were Mark Padmore, Susan Bickley and David Stout), conductor (Adrian Partington) and orchestra (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra) and the chorus was just Bristol Choral Society (with semi-chorus and some other singers from the BBC National Chorus of Wales). Bath’s own Peter King played the organ.

I’m not going to do any direct comparisons to the other performance I sang in this autumn, so here are some random thoughts on The Dream of Gerontius:

  • If you happen to have a bootleg recording of Kathleen Ferrier singing the role of the Angel, the musical world would like to hear from you.
  • I was sat near the percussion and on display there was a set of bells on a strap, but I never heard them. Presumably I was singing at the moment when they were used. Likewise, I’m a bit vague about exactly where the organ is played, though I was aware of it some of the time.
  • I imagine not even many Catholics have eschatology quite like this any more. It all makes the process of salvation seem very complicated. Contrast the poster that was on display in local churches: a crucifix with the slogan ‘The hard work’s already been done’. But in an age where there’s widespread folk belief in guardian angels, it might not be as out of touch as at first appears.
  • Gerontius has what seems to be a rather crowded deathbed, surrounded by a choir of friends and a priest. Does he have no relatives?
  • The reviewers of the Cardiff performance commented on how prominent the Wagnerian influence on the work was. It’s quite fun trying to work out the leitmotif-like phrases and what they signify. And at the end, someone consigns someone they love to be surrounded by fire for a while, and sings farewell to them. How much more Wagnerian a scenario do you want?
  • I find the libretto towards the end a bit confusing. Who exactly is coming back to whom?
  • We used the passage immediately before Praise to the Holiest (along with the opening of Webern’s Passacaglia and a Beethoven string quartet) as a test piece when buying new speakers. I now can’t hear or sing it without thinking of hifi.
  • There are alternative notes for the chorus if Sanctus, Fortis is sung in A flat. Was this once common practice? Surely any tenor who could sing the opening of ‘Take me away’ could sing ‘Sanctus, Fortis’ in B flat?
  • Our demons this time would have been demonic enough even for a Guardian reviewer. But Newman (and Elgar) gives them a satirical edge. I modelled my interpretation on those Bathonians who will only associate with those whose house is thought to be at least as large as theirs: ‘Our crowns got taken away … and given to people like THAT!’ This raises a more serious question though. How do you depict evil, as opposed to evil thoughts or actions? Should one even try to?

We had an appreciative review on the BBC Music Magazine’s web site.

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Lunchtime in the Building of Bath Museum

Posted on December 13, 2014 by vhk10

I went to a lunchtime concert given by the ‘Men with Horns’ (only without the horns) conducted by Mike Daniels in the Building of Bath Museum. This concert was very popular as the choir had all asked their friends, and programmes ran out. If someone reading this has a machine-readable one, I’d be interested to have it.

The main piece was a mass setting by Rheinberger, sung with the chorus ranged around a first-floor gallery (the building is a former chapel). The conductor of Priory Voices had better not find out about it, or we sopranos and altos might find ourselves out of a job (another mass by this composer is a favourite of his). There were a couple of motets by Rheinberger too and a new piece by Ed Bettella on a First World War theme.

The Building of Bath museum has unusual opening hours, and I hadn’t been there for a while. The concert ticket gives admission to the museum too, so I could browse the exhibits afterwards, and look for my house on the big model of the city on display.

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The sea will give up the dead

Posted on December 13, 2014 by vhk10

A while since our performance of the Berlioz Requiem in London but the time came round for us to revisit it in Gloucester Cathedral. The chorus were mostly the same people, and we still had the Philharmonia Orchestra, but soloist (now Paul Nilon), conductor (now Adrian Partington) and semi-chorus had all changed.

The location posed considerable problems when locating the four extra brass bands. But there is a huge gain when compared with the relatively sterile ambience of the Royal Festival Hall. Here you are surrounded by memorials to those who have died (unlike some Cathedrals, Gloucester hasn’t tidied these away to the cloisters). It gives extra vividness to the depiction of all humanity being rounded up on the Day of Judgement, something which some of these memorials themselves illustrate. Not just one person marching off to their doom as in the Symphonie Fantastique, but the Jacobean teenager who died in childbirth, Edward II, the memsahib who died and was buried at sea, everybody.

There’s talk of a putting on a workshop and performance of this piece again in Gloucester in three years or so – the Grande Messe des Morts fan club clearly has many paid-up members in these parts.

A review from Seen and Heard International: Horrors of Hell unleashed musically in Gloucester’s ancient Cathedral

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Choir reunions

Posted on December 9, 2014 by vhk10

A couple of years ago I was part of the enjoyable 10 year reunion of the Exultate Singers. It was possible because my name had been kept on file as a former singer.

Recently I’ve been finding out about my status with regard to a couple of other former choirs. The Chantry Singers of Bath, who disbanded in 2010 (a few years after I left) had a reunion recently. I have contacted their former director who has added me to the list of those interested in future such events.

Unfortunately the Bath Camerata have (I’m told) given up keeping a register of sometime members, which I think Pauline Perrin used to do. I enjoyed returning to the choir for occasional Good Friday and anniversary concerts, but it looks as if this won’t be possible in future. The choir has now been going for nearly 30 years, and had a high turnover of singers in that time. Certainly I know a lot of former Camerata members, and a choir that reunited most of them would be a large one.

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Mozartfest 2014 (2): Padmore/Emersons/Vertavo

Posted on December 1, 2014 by vhk10

There’s been a lot of music around (what a good thing) so it’ll be a whistle-stop tour through some of the other concerts we went to.

Mark Padmore has performed at the Mozartfest before, and I will soon be sharing a concert platform with him. He sang Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann (with Schubert’s Leise flehen meine Lieder as an encore). He made light work of the vocal awkwardnesses of Beethoven’s songs; I was particularly impressed by the distinctions in the verses of Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel. His voice has got rather weightier since I last heard it. The Schumann (the Liederkreis op. 39 and four settings of Hans Christian Andersen) gave his distinguished accompanist Till Fellner the chance to shine. The recital wasn’t nearly as well attended as it should have been, though admittedly it had been moved from the smaller Guildhall to the Assembly Rooms. Marshfield ice cream again lurked for the cognoscenti in a freezer cabinet in a remote corner, though I thought the Christmas pudding flavour was a bit premature. Afterwards I dashed out with flyers to plug his forthcoming performance in Bristol.

Bath Chronicle review

Our final two concerts included 20th-century works; we wish there was rather more programming at the Mozartfest that did this, rather than staying in a perceived comfort zone of surrounding Mozart with works written within a century of his time.

In the recital given by the Emersons, Shostakovich Op 73 (which followed Haydn’s Joke quartet) was the most successful piece. Op. 131 hard to mess up if you can play it at all, but one of Beethoven’s little jokes was spoilt; you’re meant to hear the theme being passed along the four players, but the violinists weren’t side by side so it didn’t work.

Bath Chronicle review

Finally I heard the Vertavo Quartet (I think the first all-female professional string quartet that I’ve come across) with Paul Lewis, playing Mozart’s concerto K414 in its most scaled-down arrangement. This was followed by Bartók’s Sixth Quartet and after the interval Dvořák’s piano quintet no. 2. All of these received performances that were thoughtful rather than ebullient. The Bartók in particular repaid the effort of concentration. The Saturday morning concerts seem to attract a more committed and less ‘social’ audience then some of the others.

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Mozartfest 2014 (1): Imogen Cooper and a twang from the Sitkovetskys

Posted on November 30, 2014 by vhk10

While the International Music Festival struggles, the Bath Mozartfest is thriving (and now described by its chairman as ‘Bath’s premier music festival’). Part of the reason for this is the well-established relationships with certain leading performers and groups, plus some inspired talent-spotting which nabs emerging ones for the Mozartfest before they are well known and then retains them. This was exemplified in the first two concerts we went to. Neither contained any music by Mozart, and while WAM has not been on the programme of every concert in every Mozartfest, this was true of more concerts in this year’s Festival: perhaps moving in more on the International Music Festival’s territory.

Imogen Cooper in the Assembly Rooms played mostly Schumann (Novelette, Davidsbündlertänze, Abegg Variations), but ended with Schubert’s D960. It was a long programme, especially as she favours slow tempi. Her encore was the Allegretto in C minor D915.

The following day we heard the Sitkovetsky Piano trio, on I think their third visit to Bath (they seem to have have Wednesday lunchtime Guildhall slot at the Mozartfest), playing Beethoven’s op. 70 no. 2 and Dvořák’s op. 65. This sold out and we got returned tickets. The trio were particularly good at the more legato passages; as before, their pianist Wu Qian impressed. They were not nonplussed when their cellist broke a string in the Dvořák; after a brief break off-stage they returned and resumed playing from a point shortly before the interruption (as this was an intermezzo movement with a clear break between sections, it wasn’t too hard to pick up).

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My Radio 3 début

Posted on November 12, 2014 by vhk10

When I sang in the last English Cathedral last year, people asked what my next ambition was. I didn’t really have a single big one, but I did have a number of other things I wanted to do, among which was singing on Radio 3. I’ve sung on Radio 2 (Sunday Half Hour, back in my Manchester days) and Radio 4 (several times on the Daily Service, and more recently on the Sunday morning broadcast worship). So naturally I jumped at the chance for members of Bristol Choral Society to join the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth, in The Dream of Gerontius in St. David’s Hall, Cardiff, broadcast live as a ‘Performance on 3’.

This is a work I’ve sung a number of times before, though not in the lifetime of this blog. Previous performances have included one in Liverpool Anglican Cathedral which illustrated how much slower sound is than light, and my only performance with the CUMS Chorus. I’ve never sung in the semi-chorus, though I am a veteran of the optional top B in part 1 (I didn’t do either of these this time round). This was the first time I’d sung the work in a concert hall rather than a church.

Only Anna Larsson of the soloists survived from the original lineup; the other two (WNO stalwart Peter Hoare and Peter Rose) replaced the originally scheduled singers. The BBCNOW Chorus appears to have close links to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, which I think supplied students for the semi-chorus.

When a concert is broadcast, the apparatus of broadcasting is much less obvious than in a studio recording, or even a service. (Presumably because the audience haven’t paid to look at lots of equipment). There were microphones dangling in front of us, and an announcer came on stage to introduce the performance, but no red light that was visible to me, for example.

We got a four-star review in the Guardian and compliments on the Radio 3 Forum. The broadcast will be on iPlayer till early December.

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Two Cardiff concert halls

Posted on November 9, 2014 by vhk10

I’ve just made the acquaintance of St. David’s Hall and BBC Hoddinott Hall for the first time (as performer, not audience).

Hoddinott Hall seems to be a Cardiff equivalent of LSO St. Luke’s, only purpose-built. It is still very new, and has an attractive wood-panelled interior. Acoustically, it has an interesting quirk. Usually when I am rehearsing or performing with a large choir in a concert hall, I can’t really hear myself, and the other singers all blend into one another. But in Hoddinott Hall you can hear the row behind you very distinctly. This has a knock-on effect, an awareness that the singers in the row in front of you will be able to hear you individually in the same way – certainly an incentive to pull your socks up.

St. David’s Hall seats about the same number as Bristol’s Colston Hall, but is laid out very differently. The seating is largely divided into smallish blocks set at various angles, which surround the stage. Being a large choir, we used one of these blocks on each side as well as the choir seating behind the stage. The hall is tucked in next to a shopping centre, which partly dictated its layout.

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