a long day at Guildford

Posted on November 7, 2011 by vhk10

The Erleigh Cantors arrived at Guildford Cathedral at 8.30 a.m. and we finally left about 7.45 in the evening after singing three services (with a couple of free hours in the afternoon).

This event featured music by a number of famous composers.  Our Mass setting was Haydn’s Little Organ Mass, at Mattins we sang Vaughan Williams Te Deum in G and the evensong anthem was Bach’s Lobet den Herrn.  I hadn’t sung any of the Bach motets for a while, but this one was thoroughly drilled into me in my Cambridge days, so no danger of singing a B flat for a B natural or any similar mistake.  More of a challenge was keeping both sides and the organ together in such a broad space.

I’d never sung Poulenc’s Salve Regina before, though it wasn’t hard to learn as it was full of his characteristic turns of phrase.  Like the Schütz motet we sang from the same book a few months ago, it reserves its highest note for the final phrase (at least in my part).  Not quite a new piece, but I had not sung Blitheman’s In pace for a very long time, probably not since my early student days.

The Erleigh Cantors have done a lot of Kenneth Leighton, but rather surprisingly until now neither of his canticle settings.  We used the first ‘Magdalen College’ set at Evensong.  Other twentieth-century repertoire was the Sumsion responses and And I saw a new heaven by Bainton.

Evensong was the first time I’d sung at Guildford with the lights on, which enabled me to appreciate the changing patterns on the cloth which hangs behind the altar.  A Canon of Guildford is about to move to our church, so she should feel at home with our liturgically-themed lighting!

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Wakefield falls

Posted on October 31, 2011 by vhk10

Long-term readers of this blog will know of my ambition to perform in all 42 Church of England Cathedrals, and that since I sang in Leicester in June only two remain. I seized the opportunity to join a ‘come and sing’ performance of the Messiah in one of these, Wakefield.

We were accompanied by the Cathedral organ (a rather temperamental beast tuning-wise, if some of the notices warning not to leave certain doors near it open were to be believed).  Our conductor was the Cathedral organist, Tom Moore.  Most of us were Messiah veterans; I put up my hand after a moment’s thought when those who’d sung the work more than ten times were invited to identify themselves.

In fact this performance was only of parts 1 and 2.  We lost And he shall purify from part 1, but otherwise the cuts were pretty standard ones, and we did get some numbers such as Lift up your heads and The Lord gave the word which are often missing.  We coped with some pretty brisk tempi, with tenors and basses helped by some reinforcement from the Cathedral choir.  As seems usual in Northern come-and-sings, refreshments were laid on for us for a modest cost between rehearsal and performance.

So only Bradford Cathedral remains.  I shall concentrate my energies on finding a suitable event there to attach myself to.

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LPs: frivolities at the end

Posted on October 25, 2011 by vhk10

There were still a few discs of music, mostly of a lighter variety. A four-disc set of Viennese waltzes, marches and polkas by assorted composers.  Four sets of Gilbert and Sullivan, mostly with Sargent and Glyndebourne.  The only recording I myself am singing on, a disc made by Corpus Christi College choir, Cambridge, in 1987, which I enjoyed more than I expected to on re-hearing, though I still think that Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia (which we also performed at the May Week post-concert drinks in Old Court) didn’t really come off.  (The disc was described in a review at the time as ‘a recommendable release’, though I’m not sure it sold very many copies).

Then there was the purely humorous in the shape of the two Flanders and Swann recordings, which were quickly snaffled up by the children once transferred.  And a novelty disc of mechanical instruments from the Paul Corin Collection (threatened at the time we bought the LP on holiday, but still in existence).  The remaining recordings were outside the subject scope of this blog.

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LPs batch 31: choral heavyweights

Posted on October 25, 2011 by vhk10

Now well past the 200 LP mark.  Bringing up the rear of the ‘serious’ music were two sets: a second recording of Verdi’s Requiem, with Guilini and the Philharmonia (for good measure, we also had the same forces doing the Quattro Pezzi Sacri).  And a set of Bach’s St. John Passion from Hungary which I bought while on a choir tour there. The other disc was Die schöne Müllerin with Fischer-Dieskau and Moore.

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LPs batch 30: the end approaches

Posted on October 25, 2011 by vhk10

By now I was beginning to get onto some of the miscellaneous discs which collected music by various composers.  In this case two discs of assorted anthems from Jesus College, Cambridge (with whom my college neighbour sang): Seek Ye the Lord and Vox Dicentis: Clama. There was what I think was a Reader’s Digest collection of Strauss waltzes, including some relatively obscure ones.  And finally we got to the end of the Russian discs: Tchaikovsky’s violin and first piano concertos from the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony from Rostropovich and the Moscow Philharmonic.

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LPs batch 29: Vivaldi

Posted on October 25, 2011 by vhk10

The baroque repertoire wasn’t represented strongly in our LPs, but we did have two discs of Vivaldi’s concertos L’estro armonico.  (These proved rather tricky to put on CD because they turned out to have persistent clicks).  The very last of our numerous Chopin discs was Krystian Zimerman playing the Waltzes.  The rest of this batch was symphonic: Brahms’ fourth symphony and Tragic Overture with the Berlin Philharmonic and Karajan, Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony (Concertgebouw/Haitink) and his Manfred symphony with Jansons and the Oslo Philharmonic (I’m afraid that this symphony is a bit lost on me).

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New anthems by Shephard and Ives

Posted on October 21, 2011 by vhk10

New to me, that is.  I had a busy weekend of services in two different churches.  In one, I was introduced to Shephard’s The Secret of Christ (you’ll have to listen to the anthem to find out what it is) and Ives’ Ubi Caritas which makes a change from the usual soprano-unfriendly Duruflé.

The other service had rather more standard fare, though not pieces I’m used to performing in Bath: Stanford in A and Bairstow’s Blessed City, Heavenly Salem.  We were fortunate in having Dr Anthony Crossland as our conductor.  For this service we were permitted to wear academic hoods, and his Lambeth DMus (with the hood in Oxford style) was easily the winner.

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The Bath Recital Artists’ Trust

Posted on October 13, 2011 by vhk10

This organises a regular and well-advertised series of recitals in the Pump Room, given by up-and-coming performers. My husband received a pair of complimentary tickets to the piano recital by Christopher Guild – we’re not sure why. Perhaps they selected some Bath University academics or members of the mailing list at the Festivals Box Office?

Anyway he went along and enjoyed the recital, though a bit tired to take it in after doing a 20-mile sponsored walk earlier in the day. The programme was a rather mixed bag comprising the Moonlight Sonata, Debussy’s Children’s Corner, Liszt’s paraphrase on a waltz from Faust, and Reubke’s sonata in B flat minor. Reubke is one of those cult composers among organists – his organ sonata based on Ps. 94 is mentioned by them in awe-struck tones – but this sonata was rather rambling. The Debussy came off best, in my husband’s opinion.

Another unusual feature of the concert was the birthday cake for all in the interval, as the event was also in honour of a major birthday for the organiser of the series.

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for whom the bell tolls

Posted on October 6, 2011 by vhk10

On September 10th I took part in a ‘come and sing’ Verdi Requiem at Bristol Cathedral with the New Bristol Sinfonia and soloists, presented as a 9/11 memorial concert. I passed up a chance to sing this work earlier in the year and realised it was a very long time since I’d sung it. As I transferred a couple of recordings to CD over the summer, I regretted this and so seized the opportunity to bridge this gap.

The ‘come and sing’ approach might not be thought to work too well for this particular piece, but I think some of the Bristol choral societies must have done it recently. While some of my neighbours were new to the work and others (like me) had not performed it for a while, the level of familiarity with it seemed to be very high. I think it’s also true that once you know the Verdi Requiem, it’s with you for life.

I go back quite a way with the conductor, Mark Lee, as he was organ scholar of my Cambridge college. He led a briskly efficient rehearsal in the afternoon (there had been an optional one earlier in the week).  Although I thought of our conductor as not one for taking risks, there was no prohibition on the alternative chorus soprano line near the end of the work, so several of us sopranos made a top C pact and did it.  I hadn’t sung it before, though I can’t now remember whether it was because I didn’t have the confidence or because the conductor explicitly told us not to.

We had a sizeable audience (unlike the performance I declined to join earlier in the year).  The concert had started at 7.30 and had a short pause in the middle though no interval.  The audience was expected to wait a moment at the end before applauding, but what actually happened was I think unscripted. As the final chord died away, the Cathedral clock struck the hour and then chimed nine.  It would detract from the efforts of the performers to say this was the defining moment of the evening, but there couldn’t have been a more appropriate ending.

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Weber/Berlioz at the Proms

Posted on September 26, 2011 by vhk10

My husband went to the penultimate night of the Proms. It’s no longer invariably Beethoven 9; this time it was a semi-staged performance of Der Freischütz in the adaptation by Berlioz, which sets recitatives to music and uses Invitation to the Dance as a ballet. Plus we think some re-orchestration of other bits.  It was performed by Monteverdi Choir forces, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and John Eliot Gardiner.

This was as close to being staged as you could get in a concert performance, with only sets missing.  In fact, strictly concert performances of operas, with singers ranged across the front of the stage in a line and not interacting with one another, are rather rare now.  The most effective use of the Royal Albert Hall’s space was in the Wolf’s Glen scene, when chorus members were distributed round the hall.  The principals were all satisfactory, though there was some slightly wooden acting; for some reason it is usually tenors who have this problem.  Sophie Karthäuser (Agathe) was definitely on the exhibitionist side. The French text and the setting of usually-spoken dialogue to music gave this old friend new clothes, but ones which fitted.

Here’s a review from the Guardian.

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And which voice do you sing?

Posted on September 19, 2011 by vhk10

Earlier this year a member of a smallish choir I sing with invited me to join an occasional choir which he conducts. Having described the repertoire that they do and the way it was organised, he had my interest right up to the point where he asked me ‘Do you sing soprano or alto?’

Now this would have been excusable if I’d been invited on the strength of being introduced at a social gathering with the words ‘This is … and she sings with … ‘.  But if you are going to try to flatter singers into joining you, it is usually best to show some sign that you know what their voice is like!

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Two and half degrees of slope

Posted on September 10, 2011 by vhk10

If you place a coin on its side on the floor of the nave of St. David’s Cathedral, aligned east-west, it will quickly start to roll westwards because of the slope of the building. It’s really quite disconcerting to see choir members in the stalls opposite apparently leaning at an implausible angle, especially if you had a drink at lunchtime.

The Cathedral Chamber Choir was making its first visit to St. David’s Cathedral.  I joined part way through the week, which included a couple of performances outside St. David’s, as we didn’t have so many services in the Cathedral itself.

My first service was a relatively modern one, with Kelly in C canticles and Sheppard Ye choirs of new Jerusalem.  By contrast, Friday’s was more subdued, partnering Tomkins’ (local connexion) Fifth Service with Duruflé’s Ubi Caritas.

A work new to most of us was David Briggs’ Messe pour Notre Dame, which we sang both at the Sunday morning Eucharist and in concert in St. Mary’s Church, Cardigan.  When I learnt some songs by Liszt once, I had the impression that the interest was mainly in the ‘accompaniment’, while you, the singer, were really a courtesy detail.  This Mass rather gave me the same impression in places. In fact some parts of it are taken directly from organ improvisations by Pierre Cochereau, while elsewhere the influence of Langlais (whose Messe Solennelle we considered doing) was apparent.  To provide some gentler reflective music at Communion we sang Byrd’s Confirma hoc, Deus (also new to me) as our anthem.

Our final service paired Howells’ ‘St. Paul’s’ Service (always good to sing) with The Spirit of the Lord by Elgar.

I recommend the free tours of the Cathedral, and also a visit to the ruined Bishop’ s Palace next door. Nice to see an old Mertonian (one of the early ones in this case) making good, even if no one’s really sure where he got the money from.

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