{"id":172,"date":"2006-10-23T13:52:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-23T13:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vhkssinging.wordpress.com\/2006\/10\/23\/a-service-and-a-recital\/"},"modified":"2014-09-15T19:19:08","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T19:19:08","slug":"a-service-and-a-recital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/2006\/10\/23\/a-service-and-a-recital\/","title":{"rendered":"a service and a recital"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the Tuesday of my visit to New York, I felt in need of a reminder of the old country and went to a service of evensong at St. Thomas’ Fifth Avenue, a church known to me from BBC evensong broadcasts (and a Mag and Nunc CD). Their choir of men and boys, directed by a former director of music at St. Paul’s Cathedral, sings evensong several times a week. The church’s own website, with a music list, is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The service I attended had an anthem by Purcell (O God, thou art my God<\/i>) and canticles by Wise, complemented by a suitably austere psalm chant also by Wise. They shared my taste for not filling in bare fifths. The order of service was familiar, except that I’m not used to the collection being taken during the anthem!<\/p>\n

On the Thursday I went to a recital by Dorothea Röschmann and Graham Johnson at Zankel Hall, a recital room attached to Carnegie Hall.<\/p>\n

They performed Schubert songs sung by or about four literary heroines, three of the best-known Wunderhorn lieder, and Berg’s Seven Early Songs<\/i>. There was much for me to learn from here, and I was well placed to do so being near the front. The singing was impassioned without ever being less than totally controlled. Graham Johnson’s accompaniments easily matched it, and I didn’t miss the colour of the orchestral versions of the Berg and Mahler songs. I was particularly impressed by the balance the performers achieved when melodies and counter-melodies changed places between voice and piano in several of the Seven Early Songs (offhand, I can’t think of other songs which do this). At the end of these, my neighbour all but came to blows with the man on the other side of her, who alleged that she’d turned the page of the translation booklet during the closing bars of Im Zimmer<\/i> (I heard nothing myself). Perhaps he was listening to the high B flats in the piano part which are now sometimes performed (as this time), although in my score they are printed as small notes and marked as ‘not to be played; they refer to the orchestral version’. Speaking of extraneous noise, I heard a subway train only once in this subterranean venue.<\/p>\n

Next up is a write-up of a visit to Winchester Cathedral with the Erleigh Cantors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the Tuesday of my visit to New York, I felt in need of a reminder of the old country and went to a service of evensong at St. Thomas’ Fifth Avenue, a church known to me from BBC evensong … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,12],"tags":[132,656,659,658,141,83,166,655,100,657],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2838,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions\/2838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}