roundup of 2023

Posted on January 10, 2024 by vhk10

So we get to the end of 2023, and if it wasn’t one of the most vintage years it had some remarkable and unexpected highlights. And it included the 20th anniversary of this blog, which I’m afraid passed without comment from me. The 1000th post isn’t far off, either.

I thought I’d been saturated with foreign choir tours but then came along the performance of Gerontius in Rome with the Parliament Choir in April, which brought with it as a bonus my début in St John’s Smith Square.

I sang again in the 3 Choirs Festival Chorus, with a rather lighter workload of less standard works than last time but plenty to learn: my first performances of The Apostles, music by Francis Pott, Eleanor Alberga, Holst and most strikingly Vaughan Williams’ Sancta Civitas.

More first-time pieces came my way in performances with Gloucester Choral Society: Donald Swann’s Requiem for the Living and Bob Chilcott’s Christmas Oratorio. But I didn’t sing anything from my wishlist this year.

Cathedral visits were to St Edmundsbury, Gloucester and Canterbury with three different choirs, but I didn’t make any during the summer, for the first time in many years. My busiest time of the year was the autumn, especially October when amongst other things I sang on one day of the recording of Bristol Choral Society’s new CD.

I didn’t go to many performances given by others, but I did make it to a first night at the Royal Opera House and to two especially moving performances of Bach’s St John Passion and Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.

2024 doesn’t at the moment promise any outstanding events as yet, although plenty of good repertoire, but who knows what it will bring.

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Messiah at the Beacon

Posted on December 29, 2023 by vhk10

So, over 4 years after the original reopening date (the hall was at first going to close from 2017-19), with Tudor remains conserved, asbestos removed and resistance on the council overcome, we now have the Bristol Beacon! Bristol Choral Society was one of the first groups to host a concert after the reopening, with Messiah, accompanied by the Bristol Ensemble.

Cherubs having fun with musical instruments

We kept the evening short (this was the first performance I think I’ve heard or sung in which cut And he shall purify, Surely and And with his stripes). There was a review in the Bristol Post which particularly praised the sopranos’ rendering of the final page (polishes halo).

The choir are now raised some way above the conductor, and I felt the choir seating wasn’t as steeply raked as before, so if you are not near the front you have to arrange a sightline carefully. But the acoustic worked well, both from the choir’s point of view and that of the audience (we were able to make effective use of offstage trumpets too), and the wood-panelled interior is very attractive. (I never worked out what made the small rectangular shadows visible in the old lampshades; they looked like huge bacteria.) Although the playful naked cherubs with their musical instruments are no longer in the auditorium, they have not been discarded but are on view outside it. We shared our backstage facilities with the orchestra.

We return for Verdi’s Requiem in March.

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a work from the syllabus

Posted on December 18, 2023 by vhk10

Gloucester Choral Society presented a mixed programme rather than a single work for the Christmas concert this year.

Introducing the four-part arrangement of Britten’s Ceremony of Carols our conductor said it should be compulsory on everyone’s syllabus in school. Well it was on mine – at least the first part up to and including the interlude was a set work of mine for O level Music and I still have a heavily annotated score. It is strange singing a work that was drilled into me as a teenager, but not for performance. The dynamics and other expression markings are familiar, but feel like marks on the page, because that was how I studied them, rather than as something that makes an actual difference in the sound.

The main work was Bob Chilcott’s Christmas Oratorio, premiered at the Three Choirs Festival a few years ago. I missed another chance to sing this piece earlier in the year but it caught up with me in the end. It narrates the Christmas story from Annunciation to Presentation in the Temple, with some appropriate poetry. The hymn tunes are all named after people who played some part in the creation of the work. I (and others) felt that the choir got the best of the music here.

We also sang a selection of seasonal pieces including Byrd’s Rorate Caeli which I’d never sung before, and the preposterous but enjoyable Vox Dicentis by Naylor.

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the Ronald Reagan Gloria

Posted on November 29, 2023 by vhk10

So the Gloria from Duruflé’s Messe Cum Jubilo, was once described to me, by someone who presumably was reminded of the cavalry arriving in a Western when he heard it.

Bristol Choral Society presented an all-Duruflé programme at Clifton Cathedral with the composer’s two Mass settings. The Messe Cum Jubilo is for lower voices only, and in fact I don’t think I’d ever heard a performance before. It was more varied than I expected, but always with plainchant lurking in the background.

Then the sopranos and altos returned for his Requiem, a work the choir last sang five years ago, in concert and then on our Portuguese tour. This is by my calculations my fifteenth performance of this piece (by contrast, I have only sung Bach’s B minor Mass twice) and it is rather too easy for me to sing it on autopilot, unless it’s the more colourful version with full orchestra that I’ve done a couple of times. This time it was with organ and cello obbligato for the Pie Jesu.

Clifton Cathedral was warmer than it sometimes is and has been a welcome venue while we haven’t had a concert hall available to us. I arranged things so that I didn’t have to negotiate the spiral staircase down to the Apostles’ Room assigned to the choir, but could simply walk in and out of the building as needed.

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Bath Mozartfest 2023

Posted on November 25, 2023 by vhk10

I’m going to deal with this year’s Mozartfest fairly quickly because I have quite a backlog to get through (I’m writing this some time after the event, as with rather too many blog entries this year). This year the Festival largely took place in the Assembly Rooms, and ignored the Guildhall.

After some dithering about going to any concerts, I nipped out to a lunchtime performance by the Doric Quartet, sometime quartet in residence at the Wiltshire Music Centre down the road. Their programme comprised Beethoven’s String Quartet in A major Op 18 No 5 (which I last heard a couple of years ago) and Schumann’s String Quartet in A major Op 41 No 3 (less familiar to me). The performances were enjoyable and the concert well attended.

Others went to hear the Cuarteto Casals and Adrian Brendel on the Saturday morning (my favourite time but it didn’t work for this festival). They played Beethoven String Quartet No 9 in C major Op 59 No 3, the most lightweight of his mature quartets, treating it rather is if it were Haydn. Schubert’s String Quintet in C major D956, with its renowned slow movement, got a more serious and intense performance.

In a previous visit the members of this needed to keep in close communication with one another. This time they differed markedly in demeanour with a deadpan viola player, an amused cellist, an animated and mobile 2nd violin, while the 1st violin kept an eye on things. Nevertheless they produced a blended sound.

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a Te Deum for 225 years

Posted on November 8, 2023 by vhk10

I’m not sure what the official name for a 225th anniversary is, if any, but my church reached that landmark this year. Probably not many churches are observing this particular anniversary as the 1790s weren’t I think a very active time for building churches in England, but there was a particular reason for setting up this one.

On the Sunday nearest the date of the dedication, normally overridden by All Saints or Remembrance, we had a more elaborate service, with the musical ‘extra’ being Howells’ Coll Reg Te Deum. I can’t remember when a Te Deum was last sung there, but it was thought appropriate as quotations from this hymn are carved on the window lintels all round the church. One problem with singing Matins (which some Cathedrals still ask you to do) is that there aren’t that many good settings you can use – and if you’re singing that much text, you want it to be set to worthwhile music. If not the Howells, it tends to be the inevitable Stanford in B flat or maybe Ireland in C, unless you can run to either of the Britten settings or even (my favourite) the Elgar.

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opposite the zoo

Posted on October 30, 2023 by vhk10

Bristol Zoo isn’t located in Clifton any more, but it seemed appropriate to be recording Rejoice in the Lamb with its menagerie just across the road from where it used to be, in the chapel of Clifton College.

Almost everyone I’ve met who attended this school has played the organ. This is only partly a reflection of the sort of company I keep; Clifton used to be very well equipped in this respect, with a Father Willis in the school hall as well as the Harrison organ in the chapel. (The former instrument, restored to the hall at the expense of an old member, was a few years later sent off to a church in Bridgwater.) The chapel has a handsome interior with a fine acoustic and it is a shame that only those who go to school functions get to hear music there, unlike (say) the chapel of Prior Park College which is used for other concerts. Usefully for recording purposes, the chapel is also set well away from street noise, although there were some gurgling pipes at one point.

Praise Him with Trumpets (Window, Clifton College Chapel)

So I’d never been in the chapel, or even in the main school grounds, although in the days of the Brandon Hill Singers we used to rehearse in a music block reached from the street. I was there for one day of Bristol Choral Society’s second recording with Delphian, having not taken part in the previous day’s recording with the choir.

Apart from Rejoice in the Lamb, we recorded two other pieces. The first was Praise Him with Trumpets by Judith Weir, which the choir learnt in lockdown. There are a couple of real trumpets in this, and the composer herself came along again to encourage us. The other was Elizabeth Poston’s Festal Te Deum (again involving a trumpet), which I sang in concert a couple of years ago.

Recording all day, as I have remarked before, is tiring, not just because you are on your feet a lot of the time but also because of the concentration required to try to produce the best performance you are capable of in every take. Despite the busy weekend of singing though, I still felt fresh at the end. The results will appear on CD in a few months.

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the first time on the road

Posted on October 29, 2023 by vhk10

Bath Abbey Chamber Choir has not sung outside the Abbey until now. An early promise of a visit to Southwark Cathedral when the choir was a few months old had to be withdrawn, and more recently a planned evensong at our sister foundation of Wells Cathedral was called off at short notice because of filming in the Cathedral that day(!) However, our excursion to Gloucester Cathedral for a Saturday half-term evensong survived. In fact I could have sung Evensong there the following day too, with members of Gloucester Choral Society (the next post will explain what I did instead).

After a brief stint in the Education Centre (now renamed the Learning and Participation Hub but the instrument in the rehearsal room has not changed!) we rehearsed in the Quire. Despite my familiarity with Gloucester Cathedral, I had spent little time there recently – just one evensong during 3 Choirs – but no differences except of course for the digital organ which did its best with Howells in G but didn’t really produce a true Cathedral sound. Perhaps I’d been spoilt by Canterbury’s the previous weekend.

It was a long time since I’d sung Howells in G, in fact my records say I’d only done it twice before although I find that hard to believe as I think of it as a standard setting. I’d sung Bairstow’s Save us O Lord rather more, but still not very often until I encountered it again with the Abbey choir. Our responses were Ayleward, which are the ones we know best.

There are prospects of more ‘away fixtures’ now that we have at last successfully completed one.

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I’m Canterbury Cathedral, who are you?

Posted on October 24, 2023 by vhk10

(Title adapted from Last Orders by Graham Swift.)

October’s weekend with the Erleigh Cantors was my first visit to Canterbury for a while. I have mixed memories of the previous one – with an under-prepared choir on what turned out to be my last weekend with them.

As usual at Canterbury there were restrictions on rehearsal time, this time to enable The Sixteen to rehearse for a Canterbury Festival concert on the Saturday evening. The consequences being an extended lunch break for us on the Saturday and enforced unaccompanied repertoire as our organist had not had a chance to set things up. So it was a case of reaching for that non-Tudor unaccompanied staple, Naylor in A, for the canticles, and Gabrieli’s 8-voice Jubilate Deo for the anthem, and Paul Spicer’s setting of the Responses.

Naked angel with plainchant

An unusual use for a scroll of plainchant (Canterbury Cathedral cloister)


There was more double-choir repertoire at the Eucharist, when we sang a mass by Gabrieli’s pupil Hassler, together with an Ave Maria motet by my lost twin Rihards Dubra, both new pieces to me. We saved the big sings for Sunday evensong: Wesley in E and Elgar’s Give unto the Lord. I really am in danger of getting Elgared-out this year.

The Cathedral, one of the warmer ones on previous visits, had risked not putting the heating on (the only other unheated October weekend I can remember was at Ely, where it is never turned on until mid-November).

A pleasant surprise was the knowledgeable regular congregation. Instead of the usual well-meaning but naïve questions along the lines of ‘I suppose you’ve been rehearsing every week for some months?’ we were told ‘Our own choir doesn’t do that Mass setting or Ave Maria!’ Actually the congregations were all very large, swelled by visitors from the diocese and from further afield.

We’ll stay in Kent for our next Cathedral, Rochester, which I have not sung in since the very early days of the Erleigh Cantors.

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Cimbalom for Peace

Posted on October 16, 2023 by vhk10

Gloucester Choral Society’s Concert for Peace unfortunately turned out to be more timely than intended. It matched a rarely heard work with one that has been extremely popular in recent years.

I looked for recent performances of Donald Swann’s Requiem for the Living, and found evidence of just one, given by a community choir in Scotland – as it happens, conducted by a friend of mine! Cecil Day Lewis hoped that Britten would set his words, but after Britten went for Wilfrid Owen instead, Swann took on the job. The poems allude to the movements of the Requiem Mass, but are agnostic and humanist in tone, written when the threat of nuclear war seemed very real; some are spoken over the music rather than set. Not many choral works mention whippets! The accompaniment is a chamber ensemble including a cimbalom.

People in the choir who sang in our performance found that it grew on them. A few entries took up a significant part of our rehearsal time, and I wondered whether the reason was that while Swann was very good at writing solo songs (we all know this), he was less experienced at composing for 4-part choir, resulting in some leads which were unhelpful to the singers.

One reason for choosing this piece was the centenary of Donald Swann’s birth, and his widow came to Gloucester to hear the performance. I’ll now go back to singing ‘Misalliance’ (another plea for living in tolerance and peace) at the bindweed in the garden.

The second half of the programme was Karl Jenkins’ Armed Man Mass. I had sung part of this before, and didn’t have much difficulty learning the rest. I’m not going to go far out of my way to sing this, but I’m happy to do it once in a while.

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