more singing for the famous

Posted on September 14, 2007 by vhk10

I don’t knowingly do much of this but got another such engagement later in the week – singing in a small choir at Bel Mooney’s wedding.  This was my first encounter with the book of wedding anthems edited by Judy Martin, who grew up in the same village as me. Music included Mozart’s Laudate Dominum, in which I did part of the solo.

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Savitri

Posted on September 8, 2007 by vhk10

I did something rather out of the ordinary last weekend and sang in a private performance of this one-act opera by Holst. I have rather mixed feelings about Holst’s music in general; there are delicate pieces such as the Nunc Dimittis or the Ave Maria, and others which rely too much on great clunky bass lines marching down a scale (I’m thinking of the intro to Personent Hodie – which unfortunately was our school carol – or Turn Back O man). I find the latter a wearisome device, but at least it is at least absent from Savitri.

It is a three-hander with a wordless off-stage female chorus (that’s where I came into it), in which the heroine Savitri persuades Death not to take the life of her husband Satyavan. I wasn’t the only person who thought of Gerontius for both subject matter and musical style, and I was particularly reminded of the section near the end when Gerontius hears the voices of his friends back on earth. Savitri’s bargaining with Death also recalled the long scene between Brünnhilde and Wotan in Walküre. In among this there are modal folk-style melodies which Savitri and Satyavan sing to one another.

My prose couldn’t do justice to the catering that accompanied this event. I didn’t really mingle with the guests but one who spoke to me was the widow of someone well-known who died suddenly exactly ten years ago this week. I couldn’t help wondering afterwards how she found the opera, given its subject matter.

I’d heard of the work before, but all too often the name is mispronounced with the stress on the second syllable. Holst set it correctly on the first one.

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Proms 60 and 66

Posted on September 4, 2007 by vhk10

My husband and daughter went to both of these. Prom 60 was the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra playing Also sprach Zarathustra and Sibelius 2. The verdict was that the Strauss was rather rambling but the Sibelius went down well. Prom 66 was the Vienna Philharmonic with Schubert’s 5th and Bruckner’s 4th symphonies, and the VPO under Barenboim seemed to be on fine form.

Now a question for those who follow the Proms closely: why are they a week earlier than usual this year? In 2001 they ended on September 15th, but this year they end on September 8th. Is it because there are more competing concerts on in September than in July? The week just before the Proms start can be a terribly fallow period for concerts in London.

I’m sure I heard the BBC announcer say that one of the members of the VPO claims to be descended from Bruckner. Wow! And there I was thinking that Bruckner’s love-life was the empty set! They really shouldn’t leave us in suspense like that.

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Laved, illumined

Posted on August 27, 2007 by vhk10

I sang these words as part of the rather contrived acrostic hymn for St. Bartholomew at Norwich Cathedral during the Cathedral Chamber Choir’s week there. I joined part way through and so missed such delights as Rose in C minor. However, there were other new pieces for me: firstly, Sheppard’s Libera nos, salva nos. Astonishingly, I think I have only sung Sheppard’s music once before, as a student.

On Sunday morning I performed Finzi’s Welcome, sweet and sacred feast for the first time. This is a lovely piece: like a less dramatic version of Lo the Full, Final Sacrifice (in fact when sight-reading the piece and unsure of notes, I would sing phrases from that and this generally worked). I can’t speak for the other voices, but the soprano line felt as if it could be a solo song without much re-arrangement. I think Finzi didn’t do himself any favours by writing two large-scale anthems about the Eucharist, ensuring one gets performed far less often than the other.

At evensong on Sunday our anthem was Lo! God is here by Philip Moore. This was the first time I’d ever sung anything by him although his music is on my wishlist, and remains there after my first experience of it!

Other music included Gibbons’ madrigal-like O Lord, in thy wrath and Noble in B minor, which I now associate too much with childbirth to enjoy singing.

We did some extra-mural singing while processing in and out of the labyrinth in the cloister. In practice, this turned into Eveline and Locus iste, which everyone knew the parts to. A video of this is doing the rounds.

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Prom 45

Posted on August 22, 2007 by vhk10

I went with my daughter to this Prom (BBCSO conducted by Knussen) and I think we chose well.

We enjoyed Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces the most. I don’t know these as well as I should; they’re a bit less in-your-face than Berg’s Three Pieces which I heard a couple of years ago.

This year’s violin concerto (I’ve heard several of these at the Proms over the years) was Knussen’s own. I think I wasn’t in the best location to appreciate this as the orchestra seemed to overpower the soloist at times. The new piece by Henze was unobjectionable without containing anything that couldn’t have been written thirty years ago.

The Rite of Spring was performed in the later revision, and I rather missed the rawness of the original version. This performance favoured tone colour over drama. Now was whoever put the inflatable dinosaur in the fountain thinking of the use of this music in Fantasia? And do the lights at the very top of the Royal Albert Hall always change colour from yellow to purple and back again for each piece performed?

These days if you collect tickets from the box office you must produce the card you booked them with, which means you can’t buy them for someone else (unless you give them your card for the evening). The Guardian reviewed the concert here.

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a Wagnerian pizza

Posted on August 19, 2007 by vhk10

Earlier this month in Sicily I consumed a ‘Parsifal’ pizza at a restaurant which for some reason had an Arthurian theme. Among the ingredients were rocket, prosciutto and mushroom, but it wasn’t a great success, being on the soggy side.

The local composer was Bellini, who was born in Catania, and he was commemorated in the ubiquitous ‘Norma’ pasta sauce and pizza topping, aubergine being the essential component here.

Later on I sipped a ‘Puccini’ cocktail while watching wedding parties assemble outside a duomo. This consisted of prosecco topped up with the local tangerine liqueur; the result was potent, fruity and a bit too sickly for my taste. Aptly named, in fact.

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three sermons about Mary Magdalene

Posted on August 17, 2007 by vhk10

Guildford is hardly your standard cathedral – it looks so like a cinema that one almost expects the organ to come up through a hole in the floor. We (the Erleigh Cantors) were made welcome on a return visit there at the end of July, at a time when many other churches would have been inaccessible. As it was, we seemed to have more than the usual number of psalms and hymns with references to floods in.

I won’t list all the music but there were a couple of new pieces for me – for example, Verdi’s Pater Noster, actually a setting of an expanded paraphrase in Italian by Dante. Another anthem which I’d never sung was Angels by Tavener, which reminded me of various pieces by Britten, such as his Antiphon and Rejoice in the Lamb.

Some other music I hadn’t sung for a while, such as Willan’s huge anthem Gloria Deo per immensa sæcula, and that mysterious absentee from the Priory Records set of Mags/Nuncs, William Matthias’ ‘Jesus College’ evening canticles. I like these apart from the Rutteroid ‘aaahs’ in the Nunc.

In the course of my two visits to sing at Guildford Cathedral I’ve now heard no fewer than six sermons on the subject of Mary Magdalene.

How empty my blog looks as I write this! The right-hand menu extends far below the entries on the left. I hope to put up several more posts between now and the end of August.

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Listen Again

Posted on July 27, 2007 by vhk10

Been listening quite a lot to old Radio 3 broadcasts on this recently. I like Mahler 1 and Tchaikovsky symphonies, but I think the ‘archived online audio’ choices are looking a little old. Can we have some more recent ones? When I see the photo of the orchestra, I often think that I resemble the woman playing the violin on the left of the photo, at least from that angle!

This is really a holding message, because my writeup of the Erleigh Cantors’ trip to Guildford will have to wait a little. There’ll also be an account of a trip to Norwich Cathedral later in August.

Meanwhile I have set up an account on Facebook, and may use it to notify others of concerts I plan to go to.

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Dayglo recorders

Posted on July 17, 2007 by vhk10

We had one of these (made from orange plastic), but it hasn’t been too good in recorder class at school, what with the usual beginner’s tendency to overblow. We’ve replaced it with a brown Yamaha version which sounds rather better. (I still have 2/3 of my old treble recorder – just in case the remaining piece of it ever shows up!).

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as I said to the ondiste …

Posted on July 4, 2007 by vhk10

There are about 20 such people, and I got the chance to meet one of them during the Chorus Angelorum’s trip to Turin to perform Messiaen’s Trois Petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine. The ondes Martenot is an instrument which really needs to be heard live; on recordings and broadcasts it occasionally reminds me of a swanee whistle. During a break in rehearsal we were given a short demonstration (the ondiste must do this every time she performs) of how it is played.

The performance was part of a concert to mark 50 years since the priesting of the archbishop of Turin. This being Italy, it was held in the opera house with the house orchestra. (It was also the case that much of the cathedral was in restauro). I’m told there was a fair sprinkling of nuns in the audience.

When I first saw the music I felt that I might need a genetic transplant from Joanna MacGregor, but it resolved itself with practice. As it’s almost entirely sung in unison, there’s nowhere to hide. There is a lot of repetition, generally with changes only in the words. (There’s nowhere one is so likely to make a mistake as in the phrase which subtly varies something which occurs elsewhere).

We stayed in the Hotel Nazionale, which according to the guidebook was a location for the horror film Profondo Rosso. We had some free time to explore the city including the Mole Antonelliana which was obviously designed by a megalomaniac but afforded good views of the city and nearby mountains. I’m not at my best in all-female company but it was a success socially too. It was my first overseas singing trip since a choir tour of Paris when I was a student.

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a monstrous crow

Posted on July 4, 2007 by vhk10

It was a busy week so I will be brief about my most recent outing with the Chandos Singers. All music new to me, with a mixture of the early (Michna, de las Infantas, Vivaldi and Handel) and the contemporary or nearly so. We sang three pieces by Eric Whitacre, including i thank You God for most this amazing day which I see is about to come round on a Choral Evensong broadcast. (However, the Radio Times has failed to understand e.e.cummings’ orthography, which reserves capital letters strictly for the deity). Also a bilingual setting of the Miserere by Michael Nyman, which originally accompanied some capers directed by Peter Greenaway. Like a lot of Nyman’s music, this was rather relentless, which made it hard to sing, but certainly worth doing. The concert ended with a setting of (adapted) Lewis Carroll by one C.N. Lewis, which I won’t attempt to describe; you really had to be there.
Meanwhile I sang part of Tallis’ Mass in four parts for the first time at a special service at church.

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a coincidence involving Messiaen

Posted on June 9, 2007 by vhk10

My final concert in the Bath Festival was Joanna MacGregor playing Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus. It’s a long time since I’ve been at a concert where most of the audience were on their feet at the end. But it was easy to tell why; I don’t think I heard any fluffed notes and the complex rhythms (many Eastern in inspiration) all seemed to me (as far as I could tell) to be precisely articulated. To say nothing of her control of dynamics and phrasing. There was no interval, only a short pause in the middle. I doubt whether Christ Church Julian Road had ever witnessed anything like this before!

Afterwards we all dispersed to tell our friends and families what they’d missed. (It’s possible to find out, as the concert is being broadcast on Radio 3). As I walked back home with Messiaen’s music ringing in my ears, I got a text message, the way one does, inviting me to sing some of his music in Turin later this month. Watch this space!

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