cross-eyed in Caversham

Posted on May 13, 2008 by vhk10

The Erleigh Cantors’ concert in St. Peter’s Caversham was built around a series of pieces which included a trumpet. However Rutter’s Choral Fanfare, which opened the concert, wasn’t among them as it is for voices only!

A rarity was Leighton’s Easter Sequence for upper voices with trumpet, in Leighton’s favoured format of a series of linked short sections. Twenty years after his death, Leighton’s music still keeps a place in the repertoire; this piece was very characteristic, for example in its use of thirds in the melody lines. Another substantial piece was Ye choirs of new Jerusalem by Richard Shephard (featured on the YouTube clip in the last posting). We marked the Vaughan Williams anniversary with Lord, Thou hast been our Refuge, and also deployed our trumpeter in Parry’s I was Glad.

The trumpet was given a rest for a reprise of Seek him that maketh the seven stars by Jonathan Dove and the Nunc from Jackson in G, and for Bring us O Lord God by Harris. I will now always associate this piece with a performance I sang in at Norwich Cathedral on the day Princess Diana died; I prefer it to Faire is the Heaven as it’s a bit less gushy.

So why did I go cross-eyed? I was singing 2nd soprano, and this involved a lot of swapping lines, especially in the Leighton, where it wasn’t always clear what sort of voice a particular line was written for, the Vaughan Williams, which was scored for double choir, trumpet and organ in various combination, and the Dove, which kept merging and then splitting the soprano lines from one to two staves and back again.

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the Erleigh Cantors on YouTube

Posted on May 4, 2008 by vhk10

If I’d known I’d have worn more jewellery – we were videoed and recorded today for the RG4 section of www.aboutmyarea.co.uk. The video is on YouTube here. This isn’t one of those YouTube videos where something goes unexpectedly wrong or humorous surtitles are superimposed. We’re singing an unaccompanied portion of Ye Choirs of New Jerusalem by Richard Shephard, in which I think I detect the influence of some well-known passages of Howells and Messiaen.

The video is really advertising the concert in St. Peter’s, Caversham, next Saturday May 10th at 7.30. I’m not sure what the alternative entertainment in Caversham is that night – presumably drowning your sorrows at the relegation of Reading FC, or perhaps celebrating their escape.

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What happened in April

Posted on April 29, 2008 by vhk10

I apologise for the relative lack of postings recently. There’s less incentive to write when you know fewer people are going to read it, and the blog stats still aren’t anywhere near the levels they used to be before it moved to this site.

April has been quiet – a gap between the early Easter/Low Sunday events in March and what promises to be a busy May (I have three significant singing engagements then and the Bath Festival will be on).

We did get to a couple of performances though. My husband went to hear WNO do Eugene Onegin and thought the singing was mostly good with one exception, and the staging perhaps a little over-literal for his taste. Last Saturday I went to hear the Bath Minerva Choir’s Russian programme in Bath Abbey. I was invited to sing in this concert but couldn’t – however as it turned out I was free to attend and managed to get a ticket at the back of the nave. I’ve done quite a lot of the music over the years at Good Friday concerts with the Bath Camerata, and reflected how useful Tavener is to concert planners; his music isn’t hard to teach to a choir but the pieces are of substantial length. Moreover he ticks a box by being still alive, and can be included in both Russian and non-Russian programmes.

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a visiting choir at Beverley Minster

Posted on April 1, 2008 by vhk10

Beverley Minster must be one of the best-kept secrets on the cathedral/greater churches visiting choir circuit. Apart from the summer holidays the only weekends available are those after Christmas and Easter. No wonder few of us in the Cathedral Chamber Choir had sung there and there was a lot of interest in going.

We sang a full evensong on the Saturday. The Minster uses a congregational eucharist setting so our efforts on the Sunday morning were concentrated on two Byrd motets I hadn’t sung before: Terra Tremuit and Pascha Nostrum. We found out a few weeks beforehand that the Sunday evening service on the Sunday after Easter isn’t evensong but a service for relatives of those whose funerals have been taken by Minster clergy recently. (Visiting choirs ought to be aware of this as it may influence whether choir members who have been bereaved themselves want to take part.) There were four choir items in this service, as we sang Rutter’s The Lord bless you and keep you after the blessing and used Fauré’s In Paradisum as a closing voluntary. Our anthem was Faire is the Heaven which is a great favourite of many but not an especial one of mine; I always end up wondering why Spenser couldn’t write about ordinary human beings!

Our organists confirmed that the building has a good instrument and it is certainly a pleasant one to sing in, from any of the three locations we used (the ‘real’ choir stalls on the Saturday, the north transept for both motets on the Sunday morning, the nave choir stalls on the Sunday).

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Holy Week 2008

Posted on March 25, 2008 by vhk10

This was rather less eventful musically than last year’s, but there was still plenty to do. I reacquainted myself with Batten’s ‘Short’ communion service which I haven’t done since student days and the descant with the top C reappeared. At some point when I have more time I should write about the situation in Bathwick at greater length.

Things have been quiet recently, but the months ahead promise to be musically more eventful, particularly towards the end of May.

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Sz… you know who

Posted on March 25, 2008 by vhk10

The latest Chandos Singers concert included only by music whose composers’ names began Sh (or Sz, Sch). The revelation here was Schubert’s Deutsche Messe. Unlike a lot of his church music, this is late and very characteristic Schubert. I’m very surprised that I’ve never come across any of it before, since the individual movements would make nice easy 4-part anthems.

We also sang music by Szarzynski (including the Litania cursoria which are far from cursory!), Scheidt (Duo Seraphim), and Schütz (Ps. 115 and Siehe, es erschein der Engel in which I had a solo). The most substantial piece was Sheppard’s Gaude Maria which I sang as a student and haven’t done since.

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Doric/Lyric/Lydian

Posted on March 11, 2008 by vhk10

I went with my daughter to the final concert of the Doric String Quartet’s residency at the Wiltshire Music Centre. The hall was full, and there were few people I recognised, so there is clearly a distinct audience here from the one which goes to chamber concerts in Bath.

When I saw the programme, I wondered why Berg’s Lyric Suite and Beethoven’s op. 132 were both on it. I had no complaints as they are both favourites of mine, but surely this would risk severe emotional overload in the audience, to say nothing of the demands on the performers? Perhaps the point is that either of these quartets is liable to overwhelm the other works on the programme so the answer is to pair them with one another. They certainly stand up to this treatment; for example, the discord in the penultimate chord of the introduction to op. 132 is no less jarring, even after you’ve just heard half an hour of Berg.

The Lyric Suite was preceded by a short talk from the cellist, who drew attention in particular to Berg’s skill at concealing the formal structures in his compositions. (Although once you know what the quartet is really about, it becomes very hard to keep listening for retrograde inversions of the tone-row anyway).  I felt that their interpretation wasn’t quite there yet; there could have been more contrast and it seemed as if some players were more comfortable with the style than others. (My benchmark for comparison was a performance by the Hagen Quartet in the Wigmore Hall a few years ago.)

The Beethoven was more successful, although a little fast for my taste. The concert opened with an early quartet by Haydn, and a movement from another Haydn quartet served as an encore.

The Berg and Beethoven quartets will be performed in some of the quartet’s future concerts. See their website here.

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Artist Focus

Posted on February 26, 2008 by vhk10

Like a lot of Radio 3 listeners, I scan the listings in Radio Times for the week ahead, looking for particular pieces of music I would like to hear. They can usually be picked out easily by composer because the composer’s name is in bold type. Some changes to the layout now make this harder. For example, the pieces in Artist Focus aren’t highlighted in this way so it is easy to miss something I’d want to hear. Often they are just snippets from something longer, but not always. Last week Susan Graham performed in this slot several pieces I’d worked on, and fortunately I found out in time to go back using Listen Again and catch them. But on a first pass through Radio Times I missed them altogether.

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keeping it up

Posted on February 12, 2008 by vhk10

One of the choirs I sing in used to have problems with intonation – in particular, it would lose pitch when unaccompanied. Rehearsing with them recently, I realised that this was much less of a problem now. What has happened? Are we all better at listening to one another and correcting pitch? Have some people who used to drag the pitch down now left? Or has some new blood come in recently and improved matters?

I’m not going to invite speculation about this particular group of singers, but I have one observation to make: if the pitch is really sagging in one part (especially if the people concerned don’t realise it), the other parts can’t easily pull it up again. At worst, you can get an effect of bitonality as (say) the sopranos go sharp while some of the lower voices slide in the other direction.

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Waiting for Wiltshire

Posted on February 1, 2008 by vhk10

I am on the email list for the Wiltshire Music Centre, or at least I was. A recent message alerted me to an interesting concert coming up. Then I realised that I’ve fallen off their mailing list, although we attend concerts there once or twice a year. I’ve tried to get back on it now. Also looked for copies of their current brochure in local music shops, but didn’t find anything.

This reminds me (because they often perform there) that this month marks the 10th anniversary of going on the Paragon Singers’ audition waiting list. It can’t be rude to mention this in public if it’s not rude to be left waiting!

[12 Feb: Grrrr!  I’ve been dropped from the mailing list of St George’s Bristol too!  This is doubly annoying. Firstly, we never got a chance to book for the Alfred Brendel recital on his farewell tour. Secondly, I attended a concert there as recently as December!]

[23 September 2009: I have apparently fallen off the lists of both St George’s and the Wiltshire Music Centre again! OK so I didn’t go to any concerts in either venue in the last 12 months or so, but it is so easy to overlook the fact that you haven’t been sent a brochure.]

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Conducted Tour

Posted on January 24, 2008 by vhk10

I posted the following review to Facebook’s Visual Bookshelf, whence I think it’s been copied to Amazon. I may as well cross-post it here.

I still miss Bernard Levin’s articles; I wonder what he would have said about the Diana inquest, or the current US election campaign? (Though the latter topic would be more his beloved Arianna’s territory). I made do with reading Conducted Tour, a collection of accounts of ten music festivals he attended in 1980. Some of these are well-known (Glyndebourne, Edinburgh, Bayreuth), others less so. At times it’s a bit like watching someone else’s party as he describes in detail meals with his distinguished friends at long-gone eateries (e.g. in the chapters on Bath and Wexford). The Florence Festival doesn’t seem to have much music in it at all so he looked at the architecture instead. Other chapters focus more on the music.

Levin is prone to discussing music in mystical terms which generally seem out of place today – if you have a mystical outlook now, it’s not usually classical music that you’ll be interested in. I’m left with the impression that the only music he really loves, as opposed to enjoying, is that of Mozart, Schubert and Wagner. Certainly he has a blind spot when it came to French music and little interest in the twentieth century apart from Britten and Shostakovich. To be fair though, he listens to first performances of new works with an open mind. And he is certainly able to spot up-and-coming singers bound for greater things.

If you enjoy Levin’s writing, this little book is worth seeking out. In future years it might be fun to read for its description of the way things were in 1980, but not enough time has gone by yet. It is not so interesting in what it has to say about music, though there are some good anecdotes, notably one famous highlight (set in Wexford) which should be on any list of ‘Great Operatic Disasters’.

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Pauline texts

Posted on January 22, 2008 by vhk10

I subscribe to the Yahoo email list for lay-clerks/choral scholars, and the following is adapted from a reply I recently made to a query on the list. There was a request for anthems associated with St. Paul.

When I last sang Though I speak with the tongues of men by Bairstow (which I find pretty tedious), I reflected how few decent settings of words by St Paul there are. I think it’s probably Paul’s own fault for writing in long, rambling sentences (whichever language or translation you use).

The best settings of Paul I can think of are in the Messiah, but even then they aren’t all high points. How often do you hear ‘If God be for us’ done, except in totally uncut performances? And even among the answers [posted to the email list], Ireland’s Greater Love is a mishmash of words from various books of the Bible and only partly Paul, and the Christus factus est text occurs in Paul’s letters but is probably not his own words.

(An addition: I was once told of an intriguing setting of 1 Corinthians 13 by someone like Per Norgard, by someone who had performed it, but I’m not sure whether it has been published or recorded.)

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