My part in a busy choral weekend

Posted on April 19, 2013 by vhk10

@BristolChoral
Bristol was saturated with choral concerts over the weekend of 23-24 March. On Sunday night Colston Hall hosted a performance of Mahler 8. On Saturday there were concerts by the Bristol Phoenix Choir, Exultate Singers, and the one I sang in, Bristol Choral Society performing Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Verdi’s Four Sacred Pieces.

I was one of a small minority in the choir who’d done the Rossini before (in my case in a Come and Sing performance in Oxford some years ago. It is a curious piece in many ways, and like the Verdi Requiem wasn’t all written in one go. From a choral point of view the last movement is much more complicated than any of the others. And parts of it such as the ‘Sancta Mater’ quartet, must be high in the rankings for the most inappropriate style in which to set a religious text and get away with it.

Verdi’s Four Sacred Pieces are a rarity even in this anniversary year. I’d never sung them before – in fact I sang 3 of them this time as the Laudi alla Vergine Maria were performed by a semi-chorus. One might expect them to resemble the Requiem in style, but they have moved on into a new world of unusual scales, bleak, sparing lines and plainchant influence (I particularly liked the way the contours of the opening plainchant are recalled but not slavishly followed in the melodies of the Te Deum). We devoted a lot of time in rehearsal to the first piece, written in Verdi’s scala enigmatica. I’m actually not convinced it really goes with the other three (the collection of the four isn’t Verdi’s) – perhaps it ought to be free-standing like Verdi’s paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer and leave the two longest pieces to frame the Laudi. But you’re not going to change performance practice now.

Review:
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/Genuine-thrills-fine-tribute/story-18511089-detail/story.html

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

How to improve on Handel

Posted on March 20, 2013 by vhk10

I don’t often get so grabbed by a half-heard piece of music that I have to drop everything to listen properly, but it happened the other day. I was in the kitchen defrosting the fridge and across the hall Radio 3 was playing in the living room. The evening concert was Mozart’s arrangement of the Messiah. This was I think the arrangement used in my first ever performance, and I’ve sung it at least once since. This performance was ‘authentic’ in that it followed Mozart’s directions and did not (as some do) revert to Handel’s obbligato in The Trumpet Shall Sound. (Clearly Mozart didn’t have an adequate trumpeter, and the addition of discreet accompaniment to Since by man came death suggests his chorus couldn’t sing in tune either.) And there is the peculiar moment when you get the recitative that introduces Let all the Angels of God, but not the chorus itself. Overall the effect is rather as if you are observing Handel at work, when from time to time there is a skirl on the flutes and a guy in a periwig bobs up and waves at you. There is an added solemnity, though, which I attribute to the addition of trombones.

What stopped me in my tracks however was He was despised. I’ve always found this a little tedious, sitting in the chorus chomping at the bit waiting for Surely he hath borne our griefs which is my favourite movement to sing. But in Mozart’s orchestration it becomes staggeringly beautiful. I think it’s something about the way he uses the clarinets. It really is like a stray bit of the Requiem which got away. In fact, I can hear at one point a prefiguration of the repeated chords which introduce the Osannas in that work. But wait a moment – that bit is usually said not to be by Mozart! Are the chords just an 18th-century topos which Süssmayr used, or had he studied Mozart’s Handel for inspiration? Or did Mozart somehow communicate to him that that was what he wanted at that point in the Requiem?

Posted in repertoire | Tagged , | Leave a comment

the Cathedral with the lift

Posted on March 6, 2013 by vhk10

Since I sang in Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral last year, they have installed a passenger lift, discreetly tucked away at the east end. I can’t think of any other English Cathedrals with a lift inside the main part of the building (as opposed to giving access to a tower or gallery). [summer 2015: York Minster now has one]

Singing the Eucharist on the first Sunday of Lent in Liverpool gets you Tallis’ setting of the Litany in procession – and what a long procession it is in that huge building. I was back at Liverpool for a weekend with Priory Voices.

The Tallis Litany was new to me, as was the introit on Saturday, ‘Hide me under the shadow of thy wings’ by John E West. Saturday’s evensong, as last year, was in the Lady Chapel and included Wood’s Hail, gladdening Light and Naylor’s unaccompanied Mag and Nunc in A.

On Sunday we were accompanied by Liverpool’s organ scholar, Martyn Noble. It was also good to be joined by some local singers from the RLPO chorus who were able to tell us about choral life in the city and direct us to interesting Chinese food on Sunday. Good also to sing introits – of the Cathedral outfits I sing with, only the Erleigh Cantors routinely do these.

The Mass setting was Rheinberger’s Mass for double choir, which I’ve sung a couple of times before, although the Kyrie was a first for me. It really soared into the huge space, though it required all our concentration and watching because the two sides of the choir are so far apart. Our final evensong included Stanford in C and the Balfour Gardiner Evening Hymn before a quick dash for my train.

Posted in singing at services | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Chet’s-RNCM axis

Posted on March 6, 2013 by vhk10

Like many others, I’ve been quite distressed by the evidence emerging of sexual abuse in the past at Chetham’s music school in Manchester, with allegations extending also to the RNCM. This follows the conviction a decade ago of the director of a leading children’s choir in the city for similar offences, at a time when child protection was already being taken seriously. I was involved in the choral scene in Manchester at quite a high level at the end of the period in question, and inevitably came into contact with these two institutions and people who taught at them or attended them.

I cannot believe that anyone I sang for can have been implicated in this; they were all people for whom I had great personal as well as musical respect (and, incidentally, were fair and honest in their dealings with singers). I imagine some of them must feel pretty heartbroken now. Nor do I have any reason to suspect the same of anyone else I encountered there. I knew of teacher/pupil relationships at the RNCM (which were thought unremarkable at the time), though nothing not involving consenting adults.

But sadly this news does not hugely surprise me. I cannot put my finger on what felt wrong about this side of the musical life of the city, but something did. Did the axis formed by Chet’s and the RNCM just seem a little too cosy? Furthermore, I sometimes encountered a culture of devious and unscrupulous behaviour, even skilful deception, in Manchester’s musical circles. It is in such a culture that abusers can move undetected.

Posted in choirs | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Sequins, meat-hooks and umbrellas

Posted on March 2, 2013 by vhk10

#wnolulu WNO didn’t make it to Bristol with their new production of Lulu, so I had to go to Cardiff. Judging by what I heard around me, quite a few others had crossed the Severn for the opening night. (I can’t remember when I was last at the opening night of a new production.)

As the reviews comment, there was a strong cast and fine playing from the WNO orchestra under Lothar Koenigs, built around beauty of sound. Perhaps where I sat the wind and brass came over slightly at the expense of the strings.

I don’t think I need to describe the general approach or look of the production as the reviews listed below can supply that. The glittery and sometimes colour-coded design was a strong contrast to the last production I saw at the ROH. Sequins are clearly the operatic fashion du jour, perhaps a frivolous reaction to an age of austerity. Many in the audience were clearly awe-struck by the set and the ingenious ways in which it could be adapted to suggest different locations. The production itself threw lots of concepts together (circus/menagerie/abbatoir/Schigolch as Wotan/bodies as furniture/umbrellas etc.), though they were not as much at odds with one another as they were in the WNO Don Giovanni (which also featured bodies as furniture). I was warned ‘If it’s by David Pountney, there will be umbrellas’, and there they were in the final scene (OK, so it is set in London!)

The cast included Mark Le Brocq (whom I used to sing with in Cambridge) and the WNO regular Peter Hoare, who correctly made Alwa come over as a bit of a plonker – if it’s Berg’s self-portrait, it’s not a very flattering one.

A controversial aspect of the production was the use of Kloke’s recent completion of Act 3, which includes some optional cuts. The first scene of Act 3 – a condensation of an entire act in the original plays – has always seemed unsatisfactory to me, and, whatever the impact on the complex symmetries embedded in the score, I felt it was improved in dramatic terms by being trimmed.

Now, are people healthier in Wales, is it the acoustic of the WMC or the concentration induced by the music? Why do audiences in Bath and the Albert Hall cough and splutter through concerts even in the summer, yet I heard next to no coughing through a 3-hour performance in February?

Catch a broadcast on May 25th on BBC Radio 3. And let’s hope a revival of this production makes it to the Bristol Hippodrome.

Reviews:

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

Rubbing shoulders with Vivienne Westwood

Posted on February 14, 2013 by vhk10

My husband ended a working day in London with a recital of Brahms’ works for violin and piano by Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt, at the Wigmore Hall. These performances brought out a profound quality in the music which one can sometimes overlook. The only misjudgement in his opinion was playing Mozart as one of the encores: the second encore, by Dvorak, worked much better.

Reviews:

More recently he and my daughter heard Joyce DiDonato at the Barbican, as part of her Drama Queens tour. I won’t write this up as my daughter has done that in her own blog. A night to find out amongst other things that Vivienne Westwood is not just associated with punk when it comes to music.

Posted in children, going to concerts | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Epiphany at Partis and a naval funeral

Posted on February 8, 2013 by vhk10

For Epiphany we paid a visit to Partis College, a charity which provides homes for women of professional status, all arranged around a large, elegant central court. Being private, and on the outskirts of the city, it’s one of Bath’s best-kept architectural secrets. It’s an Anglican foundation, and right in the centre of one side of the court is a small chapel (not the original one, but a Victorian rebuild in a curious mixture of styles by George Gilbert Scott, who also worked on Bath Abbey). We squeezed in along with many of the residents to sing evensong, including Bethlehem Down and Here is the little door, and were generously entertained by them afterwards.

More recently there was the funeral of a long-standing member of the congregation who had taken a keen interest in the choir. He had been in the Navy and so the service had a nautical feel, with Tom Bowling and A Life on the Ocean Wave on the organ, and Eternal Father, Strong to Save. The words to this were slightly amended (which caught out those singing from the hymn-book) but not as much as a version a friend claims to once have encountered:

    O hear us when we cry to You
    For those upon the sea so blue    .

TAGGING_BACK

Posted in funeral, singing at services | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Wexford Carol at last

Posted on February 7, 2013 by vhk10

Our Christmas carol service brought my first chance to sing what I think is one of the most beautiful carols of all: the Wexford Carol. This gorgeous Irish melody doesn’t really need all the oooh-ing and aah-ing that John Rutter puts around it, but any chance to sing it is welcome.

In fact this service included some other composers I hadn’t sung before. These was a setting of Adam lay ybounden by Robert Walker, an arrangement of Es ist ein Ros’ (in English) by Mark Schweizer, and My Lord has Come by Will Todd (only a matter of time before I encountered the music of this last).

Posted in singing at services | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

counting lengths by compositions

Posted on February 7, 2013 by vhk10

I go swimming most weeks at a local pool, doing 20 laps up and down in my lunch break. Sometimes I get so relaxed doing this that I lose count of how many laps I’ve done. Recently it occurred to me that I could keep track by associating each lap with a musical composition.

I started thinking of works with numbers in their titles. I mean cardinal rather than ordinal numbers. Individual songs or arias don’t count. So I allow:

  • Four Last Songs
  • Six Orchestral Pieces
  • The Twelve
  • Music for 18 Musicians

but don’t allow:

  • Ninth Symphony
  • Octet

The low numbers are easy – being into Second Viennese School helps quite a lot here – but I’m missing the following: 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20. So any suggestions of works which feel these gaps would be gratefully received.

Posted in category-defying | 3 Comments

singing Messiah to 3,000

Posted on January 16, 2013 by vhk10

Strictly speaking, I didn’t do this, because the audience was split between the ‘mini-Messiah‘ in the afternoon and a full performance (with a few cuts) in the evening. But singing to a nearly-full Colston Hall was a change from the last concert I sang, which had an audience of about 20.

This was my first performance with Bristol Choral Society, and about my fifteenth performance of the Messiah. I won’t say that I had it off perfectly from memory, but I now know which bits to work on for next year.

Our orchestra was Music for Awhile. Sat in the front row, I had a good opportunity to see who played what, and realised just how lightly scored Messiah is, with oboes, bassoons and (sparingly used) trumpet being the only wind instruments in our performance. The Trumpet Shall Sound is the only place where any of them is used as an obbligato instrument. (Of course the situation is a bit more complicated as other instruments were added even in Handel’s day and the bassoons are optional. Mozart’s re-orchestration is still frequently performed). Once you’ve got a good enough trumpeter, the rest of the orchestra should fall into place quite easily.

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

Advent at Christ Church Bath

Posted on January 14, 2013 by vhk10

We held over our Advent carol service till the second Sunday of Advent, in order not to clash with similar services at Bath Abbey and elsewhere. There was a piece (and composer) new to me: Come, thou long-expected Jesus by Daniel Gawthrop. I re-encountered A New Song by James MacMillan and now know why the vocal parts change abruptly in style from simple to florid and back again; it is an adaptation of an earlier piece (Advent Antiphon) for soloist and congregation. (This earlier piece is on the new Advent at Merton CD).

The previous evening some of us had been out singing carols at the Christmas market for an hour. We had something of a ‘graveyard slot’ – the last hour on Saturday before the market shut, when people are gradually drifting away. However we got some complimentary comments including someone who had thought we were a much larger group until he saw us!

The following weekend I went to the Christmas concert given by local choir Canzona. The largest piece on the programme was Poulenc’s four Christmas motets; of these, Videntes Stellam seems to get performed most, with O magnum mysterium also getting quite a few outings. The programme also included some arrangements by people associated with the choir, and, as is almost mandatory in a Christmas concert, a couple of carols for the congregation.

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

a Bohème that will run and run

Posted on January 13, 2013 by vhk10

We went to see Welsh National Opera’s La bohème in Bristol, the first time I’d had this standard operatic experience. The production was new this year, and I predict that it will be returning more than once, as it suits the opera admirably. I was particularly impressed with the use of projections at the back of the stage to suggest changing times of day and seasons. This and Beatrice and Benedict suggest that WNO has some particularly adept lighting technicians, but here the lighting didn’t steal the show.

As to the performances, I don’t really have very much to say except well done all round. There seem to be a new crop of singers coming through in WNO productions so I hope I’ll be hearing from them again; likewise the conductor, Andrew Greenwood.

Reviews:

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