2008 and 2009’s resolutions

Posted on December 31, 2008 by vhk10

Back again in the final hours of 2008 to review the year just past. 2008 would have done well to live up to 2007, and unfortunately it didn’t, although there were quite a few highlights from my point of view. I sang Bach’s B minor Mass for the first time (as a soprano) and also Britten’s War Requiem. I sang in many cathedrals and major churches including Beverley Minster and had some varied solo opportunities.

I was sorry that there weren’t any chances to sing with Chorus Angelorum this year (as far as I know all the choir did during the year was some Messiahs in the run up to Christmas).

The readership of this blog remains steady, if still lower than it was in its previous location. Among the more interesting of this year’s comments was one from a long-term committee member of the Manchester Chorale, with whom I was able to discuss what happened at my audition for that choir and afterwards. I am on the lookout for places where the blog can be listed, and noting the searches which lead here. I may adjust the content slightly in order to be picked up more by search engines (which index new posts quickly), but rest assured this will not mean a dramatic change to the sort of things I write about. I’ll work on reducing the ‘uncategorised’ category in the cloud which I’ve added recently; I’m hoping that the cloud will make it clear that the blog isn’t just about singing in church services.

As for making resolutions for 2009, I am a bit wary of the whole business after last year, when I resolved to be a regular reader of Miles Kington, who was dead before January was out. However there are some ambitions I’ve had in past years which I think I now have to let go. For example, it is very unlikely (I’m told) that the Bath Festival Chorus will be reforming in the near future. I had hoped that Richard Hickox might take it on as a retirement project, but he too died in 2008.

I realise my time-keeping is getting a bit approximate. This is not naturally a strong area of my musicianship and I have to work on it every so often. 2009 ought to be one of those times!

2009 does at least have quite a few dates booked already; first up is a weekend of services at Durham Cathedral with Priory Voices.

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No power

Posted on December 31, 2008 by vhk10

I had doubts about arranging a choir weekend for 27-28 December, because I wasn’t sure how many people would be able or willing to interrupt their family Christmases for a couple of days. However I needn’t have worried, and members of the Cathedral Chamber Choir arrived to sing in Birmingham Cathedral – to find that the power supply had been disconnected: no heat, no electric light, and no organ! So our Saturday evensong had to be amended so that we sang Gibbons Short Service instead of Stanford in B flat (I will happily take Gibbons over Stanford anyway).

Our anthem remained unchanged: Frohlocket, ihr Völker by Mendelssohn, new to me. The service was totally candle-lit apart from a torch trained on the conductor’s stand, and (as one of the choir remarked) this showed up how reliant on artificial light many so-called ‘candle-lit’ services actually are. Birmingham Cathedral looked more like a jewel-box than ever.

By Sunday morning power had come back thanks to an emergency generator outside and we were able to perform Schubert’s Mass in G with Warlock’s Bethlehem Down as the anthem. Sunday evensong was focused on Howells. We had lost planned rehearsal time on the Saturday as without light it wasn’t possible to use the practice room after evensong. So we rather had our work cut out with Howells’ ‘New College’ service and Long, long ago. The New College service (a favourite of founders of this choir, many of whom were at that College) suited the dry acoustic, being less expansive than some of Howells’ others; the anthem seems to anticipate in various ways Take him earth for cherishing, written a decade later. Now I know it I would like to do it again with time to really familiarise myself with it. A performance can be heard until 7 January 09 on Radio 3’s ‘Listen Again’ as part of the Choral Evensong broadcast.

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carols and brass, but separate

Posted on December 30, 2008 by vhk10

I fitted in a second carol service before Christmas, at a local village church. This was rather shorter than the full 9 lessons, and we sang a few choir items and some standard hymns. Some were new to me, including an Orientalist arrangement of ‘We Three Kings’ by Rutter.

I neglected to mention that others in the family went to a concert by the Bath Philharmonia and Foden’s Brass band. They combined for Janacek’s Sinfonietta, the highlight of the concert, after the Philharmonia had played Beethoven 8, while Foden’s had items of its own, not all mentioned in the advertised programme. This resulted in a long concert with two intervals.

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100 years of atonality

Posted on December 21, 2008 by vhk10

After the centenary celebrations for Messiaen and Elliot Carter, another centenary has passed unremarked: that of the first performance of Schoenberg’s second string quartet, which fell today. Surely a notable date in musical history, and worth commemorating unless you reject all atonal music on principle. We don’t have a recording of the quartet, but listened to some other early atonal pieces instead. At least it makes a change from Christmas carols.

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9 lessons with brass

Posted on December 20, 2008 by vhk10

I was free to sing in the 9 lessons service this year and found a couple of arrangements I hadn’t encountered before: I saw three ships by Andrew Carter and He smiles within his cradle by David Willcocks. I was part of the quartet in Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin and had to keep my soloistic tendencies in check in order to get the echo effect as we were stood next to the rest of the choir. Other music included some familiar items such as Pearsall’s In dulci jubilo, Cornelius’ Three Kings, and Ord’s Adam lay ybounden.

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The Lion, Reading

Posted on December 20, 2008 by vhk10

Not Kingsley but the title of a movement in True and False Unicorn, part of the Chandos Singers’ tribute to Finnish independence day. We began with Freedom on Saint Nicholas’ Day by Hyvönen, a composer whose career sadly ended when it had barely begun; he died aged about 20. Next came the Agnus Dei from Kokkonen’s Missa a cappella; illness in the tenor section prevented us from doing the complete work, so it lives to fight another day.

The second half was Rautavaara’s True and False Unicorn which included a wide variety of vocal techniques and styles: everything from a spiritual to serialism (in ‘Sigmund of Vienna’).

I don’t think the Finnish Embassy sent a representative, but they did advertise us on their website!

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a Messiah and a carol service

Posted on December 18, 2008 by vhk10

I’ve got a bit behind with performances. Just before Advent began we had a come-and-sing Messiah in church, for which I joined the chorus. This was an informal performance so we could wrap up well and I dug out my Icelandic jumper (though like the Icelandic economy it seems to have shrunk a bit recently). The four vocal parts were more balanced than they usually are in such performances and general familiarity with the work was good! Our performance was conducted by Anthony Crosland.

The following day I was back for the Advent Carol service. This began with one of our regular pieces, the Richard Lloyd setting of the Advent prose. I heard this on an evensong broadcast from Lichfield, so now I know what it sounds like when someone else sings it. Another, Rejoice in the Lord alway by Purcell, was performed at our wedding but I have not sung it for considerably longer than that. (It’s actually not the most exciting of pieces if you’re a soprano). And I thought I know Byrd’s O magnum mysterium but I must have been muddling it up with Victoria’s setting because I realised I hadn’t come across it before.

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Name that tune (1)

Posted on December 17, 2008 by vhk10

The tune notated in this PDF was used as dance music during my daughter’s school play. I heard it again on a compilation tape as background music to the office Christmas party. We would like to know what it is! It goes fast. I have given it in C major.

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Mozartfest 2008

Posted on November 26, 2008 by vhk10

We liked the programme for this year’s Mozartfest and got to four concerts.

The Nash Ensemble just brought their string players this time. I enjoyed the Mozart (G minor string quintet) and Strauss (prelude to Capriccio) in the first half, but the concert really took off with Mendelssohn’s Octet in the second half. The following day others in the family went to hear the Vienna Piano Trio play Mozart (K496), Ravel and Beethoven’s Archduke. It was felt that this trio played French music rather well, and didn’t strive for beauty of sound at the expense of other musical qualities.

On the Thursday I got to hear Kate Royal and Mark Padmore in a joint vocal recital. I just arrived in time as I’d not really taken in that it was in the Guildhall not the Assembly Rooms. This concert was a real treat. The first half was a selection from Schumann’s Myrthen, including Der Nußbaum (love using that HTML), which is possibly the only song where I am more familiar with the accompaniment than the vocal line. (I once had to accompany it offstage in a school production of Time and the Conways). After the interval there were duets, by Handel, Monteverdi and Schumann again. I felt the Monteverdi, beautifully performed though it was, didn’t really fit in the programme. Even Roger Vignoles couldn’t disguise the fact that the accompaniments weren’t written for a piano or anything like it, and this got shown up even more by Schumann’s highly pianistic writing in the surrounding pieces. The vocal highlight was Mark Padmore’s stunning pianissimo control – but I felt that both singers were addressing every word to me, although I was sat quite a way back.

The last concert we attended was the final one, with Charles Mackerras conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the Forum. The first half was based around music from Le Nozze di Figaro with the soprano Rebecca Evans. She appeared in different dress for her two arias, and this was explained as being because the arias were sung by different characters; but my daughter observed that she was playing respectively Susanna, and the Countess disguised as Susanna, so she should have been wearing the same clothes! After the interval came Beethoven’s Pastoral; my husband was less happy with this, because he felt it didn’t really benefit from period instruments. A discussion of where the authenticity movement has got to with regard to music of this period will have to wait for another post.

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Richard Hickox

Posted on November 24, 2008 by vhk10

I was sorry to learn today of the sudden death of this former Bath resident. He conducted a number of concerts with the Bath Festival Chorus and I’ll never now be able to find out at first hand why some of my friends speak so highly of the experience of having sung for him.

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The Museum of Bath at Work

Posted on November 23, 2008 by vhk10

This played host to a concert last night given by A Handful of Singers. This choir is relatively new, and its emergence is some evidence that Bath has been under-provided with good chamber choirs for the number of singers here. (Along with the lengthy waiting lists for auditions for some of the others!) As far as I can tell from talking to people recruitment is only by invitation from existing members. [correction: at the moment – April 2009 – the choir is having a recruitment drive. See the notice in the window of Bath Compact Discs]

The programme was had a 19th-century theme, with choral and solo pieces interspersed with appropriate readings. I usually approach ‘music and readings’ events with some concern, because in my experience the combination can lead to an excessively long programme. (I recall a concert of this type I once sang in, themed on the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, which lasted for going on three hours!) However this time the balance and quantity of the various components was right. Most of the choral pieces were ones I’d done at one time or another, but it was good to hear them nicely sung. I was interested in particular to find out that Rheinberger’s Abendlied, well known to me, has a companion Morgenlied.

The Museum isn’t usually used for concerts, but this was a fund-raising event. I didn’t see any posters for it, and it looked as if most of the audience were friends and family of the performers (I knew two of them).

I did get to some of the Mozartfest concerts, and will write about that next.

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Requiem (2): Britten

Posted on November 22, 2008 by vhk10

On November 9th I sang in Britten’s War Requiem for the first time in the Colston Hall, Bristol. (A first for my setting foot in the Colston Hall, too!) This was the second of a pair of performances with many of the same people taking part; the Bristol one also included the City of Bristol Choir and the Exultate Singers, conducted by David Ogden, and the Tewkesbury Abbey boys were replaced by rather older girls from local school and church choirs. People who sang in both concerts said that Tewkesbury Abbey as a venue had more atmosphere than Colston Hall, but that there was a benefit second time round from having already given one performance.

I went to rehearsals in Tewkesbury and then on the day in Bristol. I was ashamed to arrive late on the day (particularly when I used to arrive so punctually for Exultate Singers rehearsals), because there were no trains and the bus I should have taken was cancelled. I am losing patience with the weekend bus service between the two places (fortunately, I rarely have to use it).

Somehow I have managed to miss the War Requiem altogether, and was unfamiliar with its music. I still have reservations about Britten and can’t count myself as an unqualified fan. The part of the War Requiem that stayed with me most was the Agnus Dei, perhaps because it is so understated. (I imagine you could ask half a dozen people this question and get as many different answers).

Britten wanted the soloists at the first performance to be from the different combatant nations, and there is also a diversity in the musical references within the work. Apart from the nods to earlier Requiem settings and the gamelan style in the Sanctus, I heard echoes of many other 20th-century composers. The opening of the Libera Me, with its untuned percussion followed by a repeated sighing phrase, appears to be a tribute to the first of Berg’s Op. 6 pieces for orchestra, and part of the Lacrimosa took me straight to the final chorus of Mahler 8. Elsewhere, I thought I detected Stravinsky, Shostakovich and dare I say it Orff? I hope that I’ll get to perform the work some other time and explore this further.

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