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

The muscle-memory Messiah

Posted on December 19, 2012 by vhk10

#MemorisedMessiah
Even up North they don’t do this – sing the Messiah from memory. The Bristol Choral Society do it every year, and although newcomers are offered a rather gentler way in I have decided to do it the hard way. Presumably it gets easier each year. [2015: it does]

We are doing all but four (I think) choruses. It seems very daunting when you have a score and a piano, but is easier in rehearsal. This is partly because we are brought in by our conductor, but also because hearing other parts and the harmony often guides you to where your entries are. And it’s coming in that’s usually the hardest thing to do from memory. There is also a certain amount of ‘muscle memory’ where you can recall the precise feeling of what it was like to sing the music before, down to how many beats you were silent in.

I have sung and heard the Messiah enough times to have most of the music in my head, so it is a case of slotting it into the right place, and not doing anything conspicuous at the wrong time. Some things that one might expect to be difficult are not. I had all the florid passages more or less from memory already because there are too many notes for you to read them off the page. Final cadences are deeply engrained in the memory too. I have my work cut out with Let us break their bonds asunder and Lift up your heads which are not always done; the latter of these has a split soprano part too, so I’ve done my part even less often. Of the movements which are always performed, I think that the chorus I find hardest to memorise is He trusted in God which I never feel I sing confidently even with a score!

Review in Bachtrack

Posted in choirs | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A service with 12 anthems

Posted on December 19, 2012 by vhk10

I moonlighted (is that the correct past tense?) on Advent Sunday by singing an Advent carol service at another local church whose organist is leaving at the end of the month. The choir was expanded with several singers who’ve joined for big services over the years, and drew on repertoire that the choir had toured Tuscany with in the summer, themed around the Church year. So the emphasis in the service was on Advent Sunday as the Church’s ‘New Year’s Day’, with carefully chosen Bible readings.

I don’t think I’ve ever sung a service with so many anthems in. As well as some standards and favourites of this particular choir, there were a couple that were new to me: Victoria’s Pueri Hebraeorum and Gabrieli’s Hodie completi sunt. Despite this, we put the service together on one big rehearsal (with another optional one earlier) and it was well received.

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

seasonal music at the ballet

Posted on December 13, 2012 by vhk10

Thanks to my bank, my daughter and I enjoyed a night out at the Northern Ballet Theatre’s production of Beauty and the Beast. It was the first time I’d been to the ballet for many years, and rather than one of the standards, we saw a recently created ballet with a score made out of existing music, mostly played live and complementing the action well. There was the diversion of identifying the pieces without having previously looked them up in the programme. They were mostly French, including Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre and, more strikingly, part of Poulenc’s Organ Concerto. Something that totally floored me was extracts from The Seasons by Glazunov. Vivaldi is the only composer really to have nailed this theme. Others who’ve had a go include Tchaikovsky and Haydn, but the results aren’t among their greatest works.

Posted in category-defying | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Mozartfest 2012 (3): what others in the family heard

Posted on December 13, 2012 by vhk10

Here’s a quick run-down of what other family members went to in the Bath Mozartfest 2012.

My husband went to a lunchtime recital by Gautier Capuçon (cello) and Gabriela Montero. As well as works by Beethoven and Schumann, this included a rarity, the sonata in A minor by Grieg which was well worth listening to.

The Sitkovetsky Piano Trio returned on the Wednesday evening, playing Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven (the Archduke trio). As before, he was especially impressed with their pianist, Wu Qian. Review here.

The last event was a concert in the Forum with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu. This had the usual problem with the Forum’s unsuitability as a concert hall – the orchestra feels miles away and the audience as a result lose engagement with the performance. The concert began with the Bath Camerata joining the orchestra for Schumann’s Nachtlied – a rarity, and deservedly so in the opinion of family members, though it was well sung. Things looked up when Angela Hewitt returned (with her Fazioli) to play Mozart’s piano concerto in C minor and the concert ended with a satisfactory account of the Pathétique Symphony. Review in Bath Chronicle here.

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

Mozartfest 2012 (2): Alisdair Beatson and the Jerusalem Quartet

Posted on December 12, 2012 by vhk10

I went to two more concerts in the Mozartfest. Firstly Alisdair Beatson played a song-inspired programme in the Guildhall. The centrepiece was Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy. I’m not sure I’d ever heard this live before. It was played with great vigour and virtuosity, though the quieter passages also came over with a lovely sense of line. The recital opened with Mozart’s variations on Gluck’s “Unser dummer Pöbel meint” K 455, and continued with Liszt’s arrangements of Du bist die Ruh’ and Gretchen am Spinnrade and Schumann’s Widmung. The encore was a Valse-Caprice by Fauré, unkown to me. Overall the emphasis was on fluency and tempi were on the fast side.

Another blogger reviews the recital here.

Later I was present at the Jerusalem Quartet’s Saturday morning concert, having been offered a press seat as compensation for the missed advertised benefits of Friendship of the Mozartfest. I enjoy Saturday morning as a time-slot, perhaps because I feel more alert then than on, say, a weekday evening. The concert opened with a relative rarity, Wolf’s Italian Serenade, a piece which is rather hard to place if you don’t know who wrote it. Paul Meyer joined them for Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, complementing the sound of the quartet admirably, rather than turning the piece into a scaled down clarinet concerto as some performers like to do. The concert ended with Brahms’ quartet in B flat. What one really gets from this quartet is overall beauty of sound and a complete balance between the players. The large though not capacity audience loved it.

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

The Art of Fugue on a Fazioli

Posted on December 8, 2012 by vhk10

We went to hear Angela Hewitt make one of her fairly frequent visits to Bath to give a recital in the Mozartfest. Last time I went she moved some distance from her usual stomping ground of Bach; this time she was well and truly immersed in it, with the second half of the recital being no.s 1-10 from The Art of Fugue.

I went to a pre-recital ‘conversation’ with Prof. Jonathan Cross, in which the choice of programme was explained and illustrated. In fact the conversation framework was abandoned after a while, and Angela Hewitt played us extracts from the fugues and explained what was going on in each one. She also explained her choice of instrument, a Fazioli which can produce a wide range of tone for a skilled player.

The first half contained some arrangements of Bach by Wilhelm Kempff, followed by Beethoven’s Op. 101 sonata (which I last heard, in the same place, in an arrangement for string sextet). These were all ably performed although in some sense they were antipasti.

We both thought that we couldn’t easily take in that much fugal complexity all in one go, because this is a demanding work to listen to as well. I can’t say that my concentration held up perfectly, and I realised that The Art of Fugue is much revered but is far from familiar repertoire.

What difference did the Fazioli make? I’m not sure that this is the best repertoire to show it to its best advantage. In particular, I thought that runs sounded less crisp than they would have done on a standard-issue Steinway. This is not so much of a drawback given that Angela Hewitt’s interpretative style tends, by modern standards, to the romantic. She wound down by playing some Gluck as an encore.

Posted in going to concerts, piano/organ | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Singing by numbers

Posted on November 22, 2012 by vhk10

So I’ve had my audition. This choir uses a system I hadn’t encountered before: you are marked by the musical director in various categories and this is distilled into a single score out of 10, which you are told. I won’t reveal what mine was, but it was enough to get me into the choir. (I’m not sure what difference it made that my sight-singing wasn’t actually tested – I’m confident it would not have let me down if it had been.)

Now while it seems rather reductive to have one’s entire vocal abilities and musicianship reduced to a single digit, there is an advantage to doing auditions this way. It at least gives an objective basis for reducing the choir, should smaller numbers be required, rather than the arbitrary methods that are often used.

Posted in choirs | Tagged , | Leave a comment