2013 and 2014’s resolutions

Posted on January 8, 2014 by vhk10

2013 saw the achievement of something that’s been on the wishlist a lot longer than this blog has existed (10 years now and counting). I performed in the 42nd and last English Church of England Cathedral – Bradford. And I had a party to celebrate.

That aside, it’s been musically quite a good year. I sang lots of other Cathedral services, including mass for All Souls’ Day in Winchester, certainly a highlight in that particular choir’s history. I sang Verdi’s rarely performed Quattro Pezzi Sacri (or to be precise, three of them), renewed my acquaintance with Rossini’s Stabat Mater and got to know the War Requiem rather better. And performed in the Forum for the first time (doing a whole lot of Russian stuff, also for the first time). And through all of this I was singing well – the long-standing problem with vocal tiredness which I think I acquired through bad singing in Manchester has gone, I hope forever.

2014’s ambitions? Well, there’s one struck off the list now. I shall continue to angle for a chance to sing in the Lord Mayor’s Chapel, if only in one of the Chapel Singers’ concerts rather than at a service. I am due to sing a couple of major choral works on the wishlist. And I resolve to be more precise about the lengths of the notes I sing.

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Our Tavener tribute

Posted on December 31, 2013 by vhk10

Much Christmas programming must have included something by the late John Tavener. Our carol service included God is with us near the end. This piece has been on my wishlist for a few years, despite the fact that it is quite punishing to sing. It wasn’t the only new piece, as I’d also not come across Bob Chilcott’s Shepherd’s Carol. We have a set of the Christmas at King’s books which contain this and a lot of the recent commissions for the King’s 9 Lessons service.

I haven’t sung a choral service on Christmas Day (or for that matter Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve) for years, but as usual went out carol singing on Christmas Eve. We were a larger group than in some recent years and perhaps because we made more noise, we raised more money. However there was no live carols at the Bath Christmas Market this year; instead there were piped ones, albeit of high quality.

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Remembering the Messiah again

Posted on December 28, 2013 by vhk10

The annual memorised performance of Messiah came round again. I had been worried that I would be back to square one with learning this, but some of the harder choruses to memorise, such as All we like sheep, fell into place quite easily. I expect that each year you do it, it becomes slightly easier; at any rate that is the impression I have from observing the singers around me.

We perform with cuts and I am sufficiently confident to start thinking what it would be like to memorise the choruses we leave out. I imagine that The Lord gave the word would be fairly straightforward, Their sound is gone out and Let all the angels of God rather harder, and But thanks be to God really pretty tricky. I well remember the difficulties the choir had learning this last for the first performance I sang in which it was included, and that was with the music! I think the problem is that it retains too much of its origins as a duet.

Both our full version and the child-friendly highlights were well attended and well received, and it was good to have people I knew in the audience at both of them.

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O Clavis David

Posted on December 27, 2013 by vhk10

Our Advent carol service used the O Antiphons and I was assigned O Clavis David, which posed the question of how to pronounce ‘sceptrum’. I decided on ‘ske-‘ with a rather soft k sound, which according to the rules is wrong, but as I found St John’s Cambridge doing something similar I’m in good company.

There were some pieces I hadn’t sung before such as Judith Weir’s setting of part of the Advent Prose, George Guest’s of When came in flesh and Shephard’s Advent Carol. More familiar fare were Jesus Christ the Apple Tree and And I saw a new Heaven, the latter piece now seeming to have shed its jinx for me.

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The War Requiem in Bristol

Posted on December 27, 2013 by vhk10

The second performance of the War Requiem came a week later in Colston Hall. We were large forces and disposed rather differently from when I sang the work there before. I was positioned round the side of the choir with a sideways-on view of the conductor and a fine view of the percussion section. (Like the Post‘s reporter I was impressed with the number of instruments the main percussionist controlled with ease, but that is what you get with the professionals.)

So why do I still have reservations about this piece? At least it doesn’t have one of Britten’s weak points, his rather arch sense of humour. My problem is that it presents itself as a radical piece of music without actually being so. There are some bits I find sublime: the Agnus Dei and the transition to the children’s voices in the middle of the Offertory – the soldiers of a future generation. And the choral writing in the Recordare and Confutatis movements (the latter a cousin of the men’s chorus in the Gloriana choral dances) is very fine. These are among the less apparently innovative parts of the Requiem – sometimes less can be more. I’m still playing the game of identifying allusions to other composers. Now I know the Grande Messe des Morts I’ll throw that into the mix (the barely-moving voice parts in the Offertory), and just what is going on in the Owen setting at the end of the Sanctus/Benedictus? It sounds like Webern, but maybe it derives from late Stravinsky, with which I’m not very familiar (and might in that case partly explain Stravinsky’s reaction to the piece).

Finally, is there anyone out there, other than me, who cannot hear Britten’s setting of the word ‘knife’ without thinking of Hitchcock’s treatment of this word in his film Blackmail?

Review in the Bristol Post

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The Britten centenary at Merton

Posted on December 24, 2013 by vhk10

In between two performances of the War Requiem, I went to Oxford and heard two evensongs; a midweek one at the Cathedral and another live evensong broadcast from my old College, Merton, centred around Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia. This also marked the first official public playing of the College’s 750th birthday present to itself, the new Dobson organ. I’d seen this in situ when attending a party at the College a couple of months ago. It is a very handsome instrument, although I think I would have gone for a slightly plainer case if I’d been making the decisions. As to the sound, it is of course a huge improvement on its predecessor and geared to the German/English repertoire rather than a French palette.

The repertoire for evensong didn’t especially show off the organ (that was going to be done at Merton’s Advent services). The canticles were Jackson in G. Responses were by Matthew Martin (unknown to me) and the introit was Cantatibus organis by the Director of Music’s namesake.

All of this went smoothly – I recorded the Britten when I was a student myself so know just how hard it is. From where I was (in a privileged seat very near the choir) it sounded rather bottom-heavy, but it was nicely balanced when I listened to the Radio 3 version. I had a Britten 50p in my change, and included it in the collection. Afterwards we enjoyed a party where the choir’s third CD was launched.

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The War Requiem in Gloucester

Posted on December 18, 2013 by vhk10

Our performance of the War Requiem was given jointly with the Gloucester Choral Society, and our first performance was in Gloucester Cathedral with Cathedral choristers in the boys choir. I’ll save my reflections on the piece itself for later. The scene was set for me on the day of a rehearsal earlier in the week; I was on a walk near Bath and we passed through a churchyard where one grave was covered in poppy wreaths. A closer look revealed that it was the final resting place of Harry Patch, the last surviving combatant in the First World War.

This was the first time (I think) I’d ever performed with an orchestra of the calibre of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, who were appreciated by the large audience. Gloucester Cathedral itself is a beautiful place but imbued with a deep sense of tragedy of a different sort from that found in the Requiem because of the prominence of memorials to women who died in childbirth. I’d been warned about the cold striking through the floor, resulting in numbness from the feet upwards, rather like Socrates after he drank the hemlock.

The Gloucester people were a friendly and helpful bunch. We were allowed to wait in a handsome suite of rooms which the public don’t normally see, and there was a chance to mix over drinks afterwards in the Chapter House. It’s good to do a concert programme twice, because the first performance at least lacks that sense of anti-climax that you can feel afterwards, and you can also feel encouraged that anything that wasn’t quite right in the first outing might be perfect in the second.

Review from Seen and Heard here.

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Mozartfest 2013 – 2

Posted on December 3, 2013 by vhk10

On the Tuesday evening I was back in the Assembly rooms with our youngest for the Trio Wanderer, a French ensemble who played Mozart’s K502, Ravel’s piano trio and Schubert’s D898 in poised yet expressive performances. This was my son’s first proper adult concert (he stayed for just the first half) and he listened intently. The Ravel was new to me and is a curious mix: everything from Basque dances to Malay pantoum to a passacaglia.

This concert deserved to have been better attended. I particularly appreciated the instinctive understanding the three players had of each other’s timing, born of long association with one another.

Earlier my husband went to hear Elizabeth Watts and Roger Vignoles in a recital of songs to texts by Goethe and da Ponte. Composers ranged from the well-known to the obscure (though Stephen Storace has featured here before); they were all served well and the various heroines appropriately characterised. Her encore was a wordless version of Mozart’s Rondo alla turca, for which you really ‘had to be there’ to appreciate the acting she put into it.

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Mozartfest 2013 – 1

Posted on November 27, 2013 by vhk10

We managed to fit in several concerts in this years’s Bath Mozartfest. We began on the Sunday night with Anthony Marwood (violin) and Aleksandar Madžar (piano) in the Assembly Rooms. This was quite a popular concert, which opened with Schumann’s Op. 105 sonata (unknown to me) and continued with Mozart’s K526 and Beethoven’s Kreutzer. We found Marwood a little on the bland side, less so in the Schumann; the accompaniment had more colour. And the slow movement of the Kreutzer seemed rather rushed.

Confectionery enthusiasts noted the absence of piano bars on sale in the interval alongside Mozartkugeln, and the availability of tubs of Marshfield ice cream for those prepared to seek it out.

The following day my husband went to hear Leonard Elschenbroich (cello) and Wu Qian (piano) in a lunchtime programme of Schumann, Debussy and Beethoven. He has admired Wu Qian’s playing since hearing her in the Sitkovetsky piano trio and wasn’t disappointed this time. The concert got a good writeup in the Bath Chronicle.

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Duruflé’s Requiem (2): Bath

Posted on November 26, 2013 by vhk10

The second performance of the Requiem came a week later, at our Remembrance Sunday service. We would not normally do an entire Mass setting, but we were playing host to a visiting choir, conducted by a former organist who now works in Denmark, and mixing Danish singers with some from Bristol, where he also used to conduct a choir. Several of the regular Christ Church singers joined them in singing the Duruflé.

We sang all of the Requiem apart from the Offertory, using some movements to replace hymns. I had to adjust considerably, not only to performing in a much smaller space (and with some different tempi) but also to the rather purer Nordic sound.

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Duruflé’s Requiem (1): Winchester

Posted on November 18, 2013 by vhk10

It’s been nine years since I sang Duruflé’s Requiem which was something of a cult piece when I was a student. And then I am invited to take part in two performances with different choirs in the space of nine days. The first of these was part of a weekend with the Erleigh Cantors (and Philip Aspden on the organ) in Winchester Cathedral – a rather special weekend, because rather than just celebrating the Nth Sunday after Trinity we had the privilege of singing at the Eucharists for All Souls and All Saints (the latter transferred to the Sunday, so they came in reverse order).

The All Souls’ service, sung in a dimly-lit nave, was very atmospheric and I think we did the Duruflé justice. We performed it in its entirety and in order (though the Libera Me got accidentally displaced and was sung immediately before the In Paradisum).

Our setting for the Sunday Eucharist was Jackson in G, which was a standard setting in my Cambridge student days, I think probably because it goes well in a traditional-language service. At any rate, it has stayed embedded in my memory. Other Sunday music included some other relatively unfamiliar pieces: Jonathan Dove’s I will lift up mine eyes (hard work to sing this one, with its long, sustained high notes), Byrd’s O quam gloriosum (one of the less often performed pieces in the Oxford Book of Tudor Anthems) and Richard Drakeford’s Vaughan Williams-esque canticles in E minor. These are no longer in the repertoire even at Worcester College Oxford (for whose choir they were written); everyone I know who has sung them seems to have done so because of a link to Judy Martin.

We had good-sized and appreciative congregations, including some people I knew, and it was good to chat to them about the music afterwards.

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Cavalli’s Argonauts

Posted on November 18, 2013 by vhk10

Some of the duller evenings of my life have been caused by Cavalli’s Messa Concertata, as performer and audience. I was therefore slightly hesitant about spending an evening at one of his operas. However, I was at a loose end, and the opera Giasone (or Jason as it became in English) is one of the rare ones that deals with the Argo’s voyage, the subject of my one-time PhD thesis. (Jason’s subsequent problems with Medea have been rather more popular. The only one about the voyage itself that comes to mind is a lost early work by Mahler.) English Touring Opera were performing it at Bath’s Theatre Royal.

The liberties taken with Greek legend were indeed great. The plot brings the two main love intrigues in the story together; Jason and Medea are married with her father’s blessing (!), but are blown off course on their return to Colchis and arrive back at Lemnos where Jason has abandoned not only Hypsipyle (renamed Isiphile here) but a whole family. The plot resolves after various twists and turns, involving some low-life comic relief and a rejected suitor of Medea (!)

The music is certainly more interesting than the Messa Concertata‘s, but what I found lacking was ensemble singing – mostly the characters just sang arias at one another and only occasionally did two voices sound at once. This was partly the fault of the libretto. Opportunities for dramatic confrontations were also missed – if I (or Handel) had been running the show, Isiphile and Medea would have had a good old spat at some point, and indeed Medea was rather under-characterised throughout. (The singer playing her had a rather disconcerting resemblance to the Duchess of Cambridge). Heracles made a brief appearance and gives a version of his speech on Lemnos from Argonautica 1, but is also under-used. Jason however emerges as even more of a rat than he is in Apollonius or Euripides.

It was all competently performed, but I don’t think this opera, popular though it was in its day, would make converts to baroque opera. But it beats his Mass anyway.

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