Strictly speaking, I didn’t do this, because the audience was split between the ‘mini-Messiah<\/i>‘ in the afternoon and a full performance (with a few cuts) in the evening. But singing to a nearly-full Colston Hall was a change from the last concert I sang, which had an audience of about 20.<\/p>\n
This was my first performance with Bristol Choral Society, and about my fifteenth performance of the Messiah<\/i>. I won’t say that I had it off perfectly from memory, but I now know which bits to work on for next year. <\/p>\n
Our orchestra was Music for Awhile. Sat in the front row, I had a good opportunity to see who played what, and realised just how lightly scored Messiah<\/i> is, with oboes, bassoons and (sparingly used) trumpet being the only wind instruments in our performance. The Trumpet Shall Sound<\/i> is the only place where any of them is used as an obbligato instrument. (Of course the situation is a bit more complicated as other instruments were added even in Handel’s day and the bassoons are optional. Mozart’s re-orchestration is still frequently performed). Once you’ve got a good enough trumpeter, the rest of the orchestra should fall into place quite easily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Strictly speaking, I didn’t do this, because the audience was split between the ‘mini-Messiah‘ in the afternoon and a full performance (with a few cuts) in the evening. But singing to a nearly-full Colston Hall was a change from the … Continue reading