Three Choirs 2023: the evensongs

Posted on August 1, 2023 by vhk10

I made it to two of the evensongs during the Festival.

The first one was on the first Saturday: Jonathan Hope conducting the Saint Cecilia Singers, many of whom had sung in the opening service that morning and would sing again in the evening concert! The music included Stainer in B flat (which I have encountered surprisingly rarely) and Great is the Lord by Elgar.

On the Tuesday Evensong acknowledged the William Byrd anniversary. Geraint Bowen conducted the combined three Cathedral choirs in his Responses and Laudibus in Sanctis, with the Tomkins Second Service. This time I wasn’t able to get into the quire; the south transept (which must seat at least a hundred) filled up and some people had to sit in the nave. This popularity clearly wasn’t anticipated as dozens of us had to share orders of service. (The order of service booklet covers the whole week, so you are supposed to leave it at the end for others to use at later services. Back in 2016 I challenged someone who was trying to take one away, to get the reply ‘I’m from Australia’! Maybe Australians had reduced the quantity of booklets this time.)

Why was the Tuesday so popular? There weren’t so many evensongs this year I think, which may have increased numbers. A desire to hear earlier repertoire, as a contrast to most of what was being performed in the Cathedral? The lure of Laudibus in particular?

There was an alternative to overspill: I’m told evensongs were livestreamed on to a screen in the beer tent. Only at Three Choirs….

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Three Choirs 2023: the first Saturday concert

Posted on July 30, 2023 by vhk10

Our first concert, on the evening of the first day, contained two choral items in the first half.

cluster of grapes

‘O how delicious are the grapes’ (Blake) Rehearsal refreshments in Gloucester

Rise up, O Sun! was a new composition by Eleanor Alberga setting words by Blake. There was plenty to get your teeth into here with lively rhythms and singable lines. It came to life even more with the orchestra, who conjured up sounds like exotic tropical birds (or so I imagined them) to populate the lush landscape described in the poem.

I’m not sure how I’ve managed to avoid Vaughan Williams’ Sancta Civitas. Actually, I can work out why – it’s because it’s a complex work to put on with three choirs, a large orchestra and two soloists (one of whom has to sing very little to earn his fee. Ours were Roderick Williams and Ruairi Bowen). So it is rarely performed (its only appearance at the Proms wasn’t till 2015) and recordings don’t do it justice for reasons that will become clear.

‘Babylon the great is fallen’ From the Angers Apocalypse tapestries. [PMRMaeyaert, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons]


It has that general air of weirdness that attaches to any artistic production based on the Book of Revelation. The text is made more generic (for example by removing the name of Jesus from the closing ‘Even so, come Lord’) and slightly expanded by quoting from other passages such as the vision of Isaiah.

No one does polychoral like Vaughan Williams, and he seems to have gone in for it especially in the early 1920s; as well as Sancta Civitas, the Mass in G minor and the anthem Lord, Thou hast been our refuge date from this time. The main chorus (often in 8 parts) from to time spawns a semi-chorus, and in addition to that there is a choir of upper voices located elsewhere. The intersections of all of these allow for some spectacular effects including bitonality.

This was definitely my favourite of all the pieces I performed in the Festival, but the concert was not over as the second half contained Elgar’s violin concerto, played by Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay from our resident orchestra, the Philharomonia. From the choir setting you don’t get the best balance and I was not very familiar with this piece (one of the longest violin concertos in the standard repertoire at nearly an hour), and also generally in danger of getting Elgared out, but I thought he did it justice.

Review:
Seen and Heard International

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Three Choirs 2023: the opening

Posted on July 29, 2023 by vhk10

As already remarked the opening of the Festival was different this year, with a shorter service in the Cathedral after processions through the city centre had converged on it.

Dr Foster would have recognised the weather, and after gathering at the Kyneburgh tower (a newish landmark I hadn’t previously noticed) we dodged the raindrops to find somewhere to sing Vaughan Williams’ setting of the Gloucestershire Wassail. We lighted on the entrance of a closed-down discount shop (rather a lot of Gloucester city centre is like this) which afforded us some shelter and stopped the music from turning to pulp.

Together with the Flowers Band and a group singing Ukrainian songs, we picked our way through the puddles to the Cathedral, processed in and took our places on the staging for the opening service. Our anthem was Vaughan Williams’ O Clap Your Hands (a reprise for those of us who sang it last year). The Te Deum was Holst’s Festival setting which I’d never sung or even heard of before, a little to my surprise; although Te Deums are not sung so often now Mattins is a rarity, I’ve done a fair few different ones.

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Three Choirs 2023: the general view

Posted on July 28, 2023 by vhk10

Before I move on to actual concerts and services I’ll start with a few general impressions from Gloucester 2023, as compared with Gloucester 2016.

Worcester did a particularly good line in cakes at rehearsals

The Festival Chorus was rather smaller this time, although I’d say it was at least as good as before. I sang in only three evening concerts (a fourth concert used a semi-chorus), as opposed to the six concerts in 2016. There had been concern about audiences not returning since the pandemic, although some of these concerts were sellouts, or almost so. The opening service was scaled back, but members of the chorus took part in a procession through the city centre beforehand to the Cathedral. The two evensongs I went to were also well attended, in one case unexpectedly well so.

I would have not expected this, but almost all the music, and all the pieces at the evening concerts, was new to me. The exceptions were the opening movement of The Apostles, three anthems by Vaughan Williams and – rather startlingly, I was the only person in the chorus who had sung this before – the hymn tune ‘Danby’.

I wasn’t quick enough to buy one of the sturdy Festival shopping bags which had sold out by the Tuesday, so I had to make do with a cushion. I was pleased to see the return of ‘Partington’s Potion’ and sampled some on the Thursday. As there’s been a change at Worcester, maybe we need ‘Hudson’s Hogshead’ as well as ‘Bowen’s Brew’ to go with it.

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I sell my soul to the Three Choirs Festival …. again

Posted on July 21, 2023 by vhk10

Actually not quite as thoroughly as last time, but I’m in the Festival Chorus for TCF Gloucester 2023 and been in rehearsal for it since the end of April. I’m singing in 3 evening concerts plus a late-morning one and the opening events. For a change almost all the music is completely new to me. Watch this space for updates!

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a big sing in Cambridge

Posted on June 25, 2023 by vhk10

The day after my excursion to Ross-on-Wye I made a day trip to Cambridge for a choir reunion at my old College, Corpus. This happen occasionally, and I last went to one five years ago. I thought hard about the amount of travel and singing involved in one weekend; but in the end the pull of the music was strong enough to make me go.

The repertoire was Sumsion Responses, Howells’ St Paul’s Service and appropriately enough for Corpus Lo, the Full, Final Sacrifice by Finzi. The old members, plus a spouse or two, had a run-through on our own; the College has now been mixed long enough for such a gathering not to be almost entirely male, unlike some earlier reunions I attended. Then we were joined by current members of the choir for a rehearsal in the stalls with organ and we had a decent congregation for the service itself.

I didn’t get round to contacting my contemporaries in advance, but there were a couple of people from my time, including one of the organ scholars. We had a generous reception (forced indoors by the intermittent heavy rain that day) after the service and also tea in the DoM’s (the senior organ scholar’s in my time) rooms. Each time I return I learn a little more about the history of the Chapel; this time it was that the bequest which paid for Corpus’ organ was originally intended to greatly expand the Chapel, including a cloister! I’m afraid my work on the timeline of the chapel choir’s history hasn’t progressed much recently.

I was also able to catch up with friends from Little St Mary’s Church and meet the newly appointed director of music there, Andrew Reid. He is not entirely new to that church however, as he played its organ for our wedding!

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the Great Round Byrd in Ross

Posted on June 20, 2023 by vhk10

I believe I visited Ross-on-Wye many years ago but since then it’s been just a placename on road signs in Gloucester. I seized an opportunity to commemorate William Byrd’s anniversary by performing the Mag and Nunc from the Great Service at a special evensong in the parish church there with an ‘all comers’ choir (I think my invitation came via the Three Choirs Festival Chorus). I’d never sung these in a service despite being offered the chance to sing them twice in one month with different choirs a few years ago.

Eagle lectern in Ross on Wye

This ‘Byrd’ just behind me kept me on the straight and narrow!

The church has recently replaced pews with chairs and are clearly proud of the ability to reorganise space that they now have, so we sat in a large circle (more of an oval, really) in the nave with the conductor near the organ console. A gain in a sense of singing to one another, but an added layer of difficulty in (for example) singing a duet with someone on the far side who could be a long way away! I had expressed a willingness to take on a verse part, and sang the Choir 1 treble ones in the Magnificat.

People are sometimes a bit sniffy about the Great Service and say Byrd’s heart wasn’t really in it because it was written for the Church of England. I regard the Tudor verse canticle setting as one of those formats that can’t be improved, and maintain that the Great Service is one of the finest examples – particularly where voices interweave in the verse sections – even if it doesn’t match the perfection that is the Gibbons 2nd Service. The notes are not particularly hard – the difficulty is maintaining the concentration over such a large span.

But that wasn’t the only music by Byrd in the service; we also sang his Responses and O Lord make thy servant with text adapted for the new King. (I never sang it in a service during the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth.) They missed a trick as the psalm chant could have been one of the one Richard Marlow adapted from music by Byrd. The church is, surprisingly for its size, not very resonant, perhaps because the west end under the tower has been closed off.

There is enthusiasm to repeat the event and though I don’t think I’ll be able to be at the proposed evensong for Weelkes in the autumn, I’d love to explore, say, some of the large-scale verse anthems by Purcell, which are rather out of favour generally at the moment.

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Bath Festival 2023

Posted on June 2, 2023 by vhk10

I didn’t get to anything in this year’s Bath Festival – there are fewer classical concerts these days and it came at a busy time for me. However I have eye(?ear)witness reports on a couple of the concerts held in the Guildhall (the Assembly Rooms weren’t used this time round, perhaps because of the reordering following the closure of the Fashion Museum):

Iyad Sughayer gave a piano recital with an intriguing programme, well performed. Opening with Khatchaturian’s Poem which was interesting but hard to follow perhaps because of the Armenian idiom underlying it. Sibelius’ pieces from Op. 24 were played with clarity and were the most memorable performnce; the pieces are good quality but would have been better orchestrated. The programme also included Mozart’s sonata K283 and Schumann’s Faschingsschwank aus Wien.

Secondly the Quatuor Agate, an all-male string quartet which is something that is becoming unusual. They began with Boccherini’s quartet in G minor, which typically for its time was dominated by the first violin, with a big cadenza. Bartok’s sixth quartet was played without compromise but was perhaps fairly new to their repertoire as they could have dug more deeply into it. The most successful piece on the programme was Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet.

I have just ordered a second-hand copy of Fifty Festivals: The history of the Bath Festival by Tim Bullamore, which takes the history of the Bath Festival up to the late 1990s. Perhaps a review of it will appear in a future post.

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under the balcony

Posted on May 30, 2023 by vhk10

I made my first post-pandemic excursion to the Royal Opera House to the opening night of Deborah Warner’s new production of Wozzeck.

I shan’t comment further on the uniformly excellent performances – you can read more by following the links below or if you read this in time by listening to the Radio 3 relay of a performance. Except to single out John Findon who made the small single-line role of the Fool especially chilling.

From time to time use was made of a revolving stage. Sometimes this is just a gimmick, but here it seemed to emphasise the images of circularity and dizziness which permeate the text. There is little scenery, but one striking image is the row of leafless trees – reminiscent of the trunks on World War I battlefields – suspended at the rear of the stage.

I didn’t have a particularly good seat, being right at the back of the stalls under the balcony. Unfortunately I had a rather fidgety tall person a couple of rows in front, which meant that effort that could have been expended on the music went on working out which side of his head gave me the best view of the stage. By contrast, directly behind me and leaning above my head on a padded railing were kindred spirits who had bought standing tickets in order to be there; I was not aware of them in the slightest during the performance.

It got universally enthusiastic reviews:

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… with a Coronation touch

Posted on May 27, 2023 by vhk10

These words qualified the title of the Erleigh Cantors’ May concert in St Peter’s Earley, the usual mix of pieces from our Cathedral weekends with some other repertoire.

Last year we did some of the obvious royal pieces because of the Platinum Jubilee. This time round we went for the Restoration/Georgian period: Blow’s God is our Hope and Strength, Boyce’s The King shall Rejoice (with a top B, a rarity for this period; the first part was sung at the recent Coronation) and William Child’s O Lord, grant the King a long life. This opened the second part of the concert.

A Marian sequence began with Josquin’s Ave Maria. I’d never done all of this, only the simple homophonic section. It continued with Poulenc’s Salve Regina and Mendelssohn’s Ave Maria. I had the 2nd soprano verse part in this last, which is a surprisingly expansive setting for a Protestant composer.

The first part concluded with Bach’s motet Der Geist hilft, which I have not sung since I did all six motets (in one weekend, and with voices scrambled!) as a student. I didn’t remember it all that well at first but found that it came back as I rehearsed it.

Our last two official pieces were Aston’s Alleluia Psallat and another new piece for me, the ‘Hallelujah chorus’ which closes Beethoven’s Christ on the Mount of Olives. A rather cheerful chorus for a work which ends as Jesus is about to be betrayed. We sang Holst’s Nunc Dimittis as an encore.

Interludes were provided by our usual reader Merry Evans, organist Christopher Cipkin and Ben de Souza on the concert accordion, an instrument I knew little about (it’s big in Russia).

We had a good-sized audience of Eurovision refugees and raised nearly £1500 for two good causes.

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