a quiet June/July

Posted on June 24, 2009 by vhk10

I seem to have been going to concerts more than performing in them. This part of the year is quieter than usual and there are various reasons, among them a couple of concerts I might have sung in and didn’t. In one case I realised that I just wasn’t going to be able to get to enough rehearsals. In the other I was asked to note the date of the concert, but only when the day of the first rehearsal came and went did I realise that I wasn’t needed to sing in it. So my next outing is a concert in mid-July.

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National composers

Posted on June 24, 2009 by vhk10

I can’t get much of a musical angle on my recent short trip to Norway. I didn’t for example see the new opera house in Oslo or attend a church service (this country provides plenty of work for organists). Another thing I might have done and didn’t was to visit Grieg’s house at Troldhaugen near Bergen. However this started me thinking about how countries treat their national composers (that is if they have just one – some are spoiled for choice). If Britain has one, Elgar just beats Purcell for the title. Like Grieg, he’s remembered (apart from actual performances of his music) in a rather understated sort of way, apart from contributing to the local tourist industry in the area where he lived. My father once claimed to have seen the ‘Elgar Tyres and Service Station’ or similar near Hereford, though we think that may have been just a local firm with the same name.

I have I think only performed one piece by Grieg – his Ave maris stella – though my alarm clock plays Morning from Peer Gynt, so his music (in a synthesised form) is often the first thing I hear on waking.

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the LSO Chamber Ensemble

Posted on June 7, 2009 by vhk10

The day after my trip to the South Bank, I was back in Bath to hear Nikolaij Znaider and the LSO Chamber Ensemble play two string sextets: Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and Brahms’ first sextet.

I heard the Schoenberg when it was last played in Bath a few years ago by the Vienna String Sextet. I felt that in both pieces there was a tendency for the other players to defer to Znaider on first violin, and they seemed rather less at ease in the Schoenberg (both the sound and the body language of the players suggested this). However the Schoenberg performance was what I took away with me, perhaps because the Brahms just isn’t that interesting a piece. Or maybe after hearing lots of early 20th-century Vienna I’d reached saturation point.

The concert is available still on BBC Radio 3’s Listen Again, though I notice that they reverse the order so that the Brahms precedes the Schoenberg.

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City of Dreams

Posted on June 7, 2009 by vhk10

I was back at the Royal Festival Hall on May 28th for another programme combining Berg and Mahler, in this case the Violin Concerto (with Christian Tetzlaff as soloist) and the Sixth Symphony, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

I last heard the concerto in a Proms performance some time ago, but the Royal Albert Hall acoustic tends to blur the detail – now I could hear it all in the much drier ambience of the RFH, along with the corrections which have now been made to the score. The interpretation was at the more restrained end of the spectrum, and was really all I could have wished for.

I wondered what my reaction to Mahler 6 would be. This particular symphony seems very much in favour at the moment – even my local university orchestra has been playing it – and my usual reaction to it is to wish I were listening to Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces instead. Would I still have the same reaction at this concert? I did, and after the very subtle orchestral colours that I’d just heard in Berg’s music the Mahler seemed garish by comparison. Perhaps a visual counterpart of this was what happened to the harpist. In the concerto the harp was unusually positioned directly in front of the conductor, in the middle of the strings; in the symphony the harps (now two) were in their usual location between violins and percussion.

I should add that my comparison is a comment on the work, not so much on the interpretation. I was probably in a small minority in not having come mainly to hear the Mahler (though my neighbour appeared to fall asleep in the final(!) movement of it). Like some others, I was also unconvinced by the slow movement being played third. (In general I think that Mahler’s second thoughts tend to be improvements). It seemed to make the first part of the symphony too relentless.

This symphony is also famously the one with cowbells in, and I believe the first work to make use of them. Did Mahler borrow some cowbells off a local farmer to add to his array of percussion? And is there now a standard orchestral cowbell? I noticed that one of the horn players had his own call afterwards – presumably this was the one who changed the chord from major to minor in the ‘motto’ theme (a bit like singing second soprano in Stanford’s Beati quorum via).

The concert was reviewed in the Guardian, Times and Sunday Times. Also in The Classical Source, a site new to me. At the time of writing it is still available on BBC Radio 3’s Listen Again.

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Some concerts from the 2009 Bath Festival

Posted on June 4, 2009 by vhk10

I will mention these briefly, as I passed up the opportunity to go because of a residual tickly cough, and let others in the family hear them instead.

First up were the Jerusalem Quartet, playing Haydn Op. 77/1, Bartók’s fourth quartet and the Debussy quartet. The comment that I got back was that these three diverse pieces ended up sounding rather too similar to one another! We expected our daughter to like the Bartók most, but she preferred the Debussy.

Carole Cerasi played the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier on a clavichord in the Guildhall, in two instalments. The Guildhall lends itself well to this type of concert as even quiet sounds carry from the platform right through the audience. This was well worth the investment of going to two concerts in one day.

I heard Freddy Kempf last time he came to the Festival. I was rather worried after his account of the Appassionata sonata then that he would beat the Pathétique black and blue, but I’m told that he was more sensitive. The Liszt pieces in his recital, played in a different order from the programme, came off best; the Chopin was less successful.

The Guardian reviewed Kempf and Cerasi here. A review of the Jerusalem Quartet can be found on The Classical Source.

Finally, to anyone who has been visited Bath for the Festival, I should add that even Bath’s traffic isn’t normally as gridlocked as it has been in recent days. A vital road has been blocked by the discovery of a damaged water main, and this has added to disruption caused by building work on the new bus station being at a critical stage.

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the Festival opening night

Posted on June 3, 2009 by vhk10

Various family members were involved in this and I found myself dashing all over town to keep up.

It began by watching, and then following, my son in the procession of children carrying their artwork on a ‘sea’ theme down from the Assembly Rooms to the Abbey (negotiating a bottleneck where an electricity company had opportunely almost severed the route by digging right across it).

Then into the Abbey where other performers were waiting, including my daughter in her school’s ensemble, ready to perform Underneath by Stephen Hiscock. My daughter’s section was called ‘The Prawn’. She’d had a busy week, as the previous night she was in Bath’s Forum singing in the Bath Primary Schools Arts Festival (I couldn’t be there, so I can’t give a write-up of that).

Dashed home to change into concert gear, and back for a quick warm-up before the Chandos Singers did a slot in the Friends’ Meeting House. This was a showcase for a sample of the choir’s repertoire: Latin American baroque, an excerpt from the mediæval Mass in our last concert, and some Scandinavian/Baltic pieces which were new to me (such as Jaakko Mäntyjärvi’s setting of Double, double, toil and trouble, which turns up again later in the Festival, and In Deo salutare meum by Erki Meister).

Then we trooped across town to have a rehearsal as usual, and afterwards I returned to the Pump Room to hear the Paragon Singers in the final slot. This wound the evening down nicely. I hadn’t heard the choir for a few years and noticed some changes in the front row (my own place in the waiting list for auditions must have lapsed a while back). I’m afraid I can’t now remember all their programme (it had been a long evening), but it included Draw on, sweet night in competition with the closing firework display going on outside (at least I was sat in a position where I could see as well as hear the latter) They ended with two pieces by Britten: a setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins from around the time of A boy was born, new to me, and Oliver Cromwell, which I used to sing as a party piece with the John Powell Singers.

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MusicFest, Oxford and WNO

Posted on May 29, 2009 by vhk10

The Bath International Music Festival has started – not that it’s easy to tell if you walk around Bath. Apart from four banners decorated by children hanging on the south side of the Abbey, I’ve seen no street decorations at all, not even the little pennants that appeared in the Guildhall area last year. It’s not entirely to do with reduced budgets – the reason there is no banner across Milsom St. as there used to be is that Council rules only permit banners to stay there for one week. There is however a display in the window of Bath Compact Discs.

I’m a little worried that the focus of the Festival is beginning to move away from classical music; the Festival’s Facebook group gives this impression, though perhaps it has been skewed to try to reach younger audiences via Facebook. I will write accounts of the opening night, and of some other concerts, over the next few days.

On Wednesday I was in Oxford and went to evensong at Christ Church Cathedral – Weelkes, Gibbons and the full psalms for the day nicely sung by the Cathedral Singers (the Cathedral Choir was away for half-term). It took me back to my days in the Christ Church Cathedral Voluntary Choir, when it was the first Cathedral I ever sang services in – not entirely happy memories, as I found the conductor absolutely terrifying!

Meanwhile I was contacted by Welsh National Opera and invited to take part in a feedback discussion, as a representative audience member. I was rather sorry that I wasn’t free to do this, as I’m always willing to advance my opinions (as this blog shows).

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my Assembly Rooms fantasy

Posted on May 26, 2009 by vhk10

I can’t go to a concert in Bath’s Assembly Rooms without imagining what it would be like to swing on one of the large chandeliers that hang in the middle of the room. How heavy would you have to be before it came down? Where are the best hand-holds? Would the bits of crystal make a nice tinkly noise? What would you see as you spun round?

It’s just the Assembly Rooms that make me think this way, not the Guildhall which is similarly equipped with chandeliers.

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Kathleen Ferrier 1912-1953: A Memoir

Posted on May 17, 2009 by vhk10

ed. Neville Cardus.

I think this book must have sold in large numbers (the proceeds from sales went towards the Kathleen Ferrier memorial scholarships), because it is often to be found in second-hand shops. My copy was the 9th impression (published in July 1955), the first having appeared in September 1954.

It consists of memoirs of this great singer by Neville Cardus, Roy Henderson and Gerald Moore, with rather shorter contributions from Benjamin Britten, John Barbirolli and Bruno Walter, followed by an account of how she was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Gold Medal at the end of her life, and a discography. The tone is very much one of personal reminiscence throughout, rather than systematic biography.

Kathleen Ferrier showed the same face to everyone – a good quality in itself, but one which makes the various accounts of her character somewhat repetitious. The most interesting contribution is that by Britten, because it sheds light also on his own working practices. If you have a bootleg recording of Kathleen Ferrier singing music by Britten, or the Angel in Gerontius, then various record companies would be interested in hearing from you.

This review originally appeared in Facebook’s Visual Bookshelf application. I’ve assembled some of my online reviews in a new blog, which I’ll update from time to time.

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Kodály and Fauré at St Stephen’s Lansdown

Posted on May 12, 2009 by vhk10

This church is a local landmark, but I haven’t sung in it for a long time (previous visits were to sing Holy Week devotional works with aggregations of local church choirs). I returned to augment A Handful of Singers (conducted by Christopher Finch) for a concert of two Mass settings.

I’ve sung Kodály’s Missa Brevis a number of times, though not within the last three years or so. It was included in the last concert I sang with the Chantry Singers; this was five years ago, although a surprising number of people think that I have sung with the choir since then, or even that I still do! Fortunately the piece had been very thoroughly drilled into me so I was able to recall it easily on one rehearsal. I notice one thing about the score which is unusual for a 20th century work: it has a dedication in Latin (presumably because this would be more widely understood than Hungarian).

The second half consisted of Fauré’s Requiem. I’ve sung this quite a few times in church recently, but with at most an obbligato violin in the Sanctus. This time there was a small band.

This concert was going to be followed by a chance to audition for the choir, but the vacancy has been filled by a former member who returned, so I’ll have to wait for another opportunity.

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the view from choir 8

Posted on April 28, 2009 by vhk10

I’ve written before about singing in Spem in Alium, I admit partly to see if it resulted in an invitation to sing the work in Tallis’ anniversary year of 2005. But I had to wait until now, with a performance by Chorus Angelorum conducted by Gavin Carr in front of a capacity and appreciative audience in Bath Abbey. One previous performance was at a wedding, and as I left for the concert I was telephoned out of the blue by the mother of the bride on that occasion, which I took to be a good omen!

I hadn’t sung in choir 8 before, but it is quite a good vantage point to be in, with plenty of time to prepare for your first entry. It also didn’t matter so much that my score just had choirs 7 and 8 in (with the other parts in an annotated reduction), since I was only adjacent to choir 7. On the other hand, the limited amount of space in Bath Abbey put me very near the front row of the audience! The choirs had to stand very close together, and rather than colour-code all eight of them, they alternated between singers in black and in white tops.

The other vocal pieces were four pieces of sacred music by Byrd (including I will not leave you comfortless, which I didn’t know before), and five songs by Dowland. The challenge for these last was making them sound as if sung by a small group, and getting to grips with the intricate words.

The concert also included the Bath Phil (like the Music Festival, they’ve got a shortened name now), conducted by Jason Thornton, performing Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro and Britten’s Lachrymae. The Britten used the theme from one of the Dowland songs we sang, and if you knew the song you could recognise fragments of the melody throughout. The grand finale was Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. The choir sang the theme beforehand with hymnal words, then quietly slipped round behind the orchestra (standing in the quire of the Abbey) and sang it again wordlessly in one of its early appearances in the piece.

There was a review in the Bath Chronicle.

I was in another concert two days later, and will write about it soon.

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10 < x < 40

Posted on April 21, 2009 by vhk10

I spent a chunk of the weekend rehearsing Tallis’ Spem in Alium, and as I did so, I realised how very many more parts it has than any other piece of English Tudor church music (I am aware of its relationship to Striggio’s Ecce beatem lucem and other highly polychoral continental pieces). I know of some pieces in ten parts by Weelkes, and Byrd’s Great Service is also in ten parts; is there anything else in this repertoire* in more than ten?

The high point for me is still the opening few bars (as I’m in choir 8 in this performance, I can appreciate them without worrying about my own entry). Would they be as beautiful if they led to a piece in a mere eight or ten parts, or is the effect partly due to anticipating all the other voices that are gradually going to enter?

*I shouldn’t really contrast ‘English’ and ‘Continental’ in the paragraph above, as I have now remembered that O bone Jesu by the Scottish Robert Carver is in 19 parts. I once performed this in a concert with Spem, in a punishingly high key.

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