January is always a quiet month for performance (although I have one new venture I’ll write about fairly soon) so time to write some more general posts I’ve been saving up for a while.<\/p>\n
Singing Mahler 2 near the end of 2017 completed for me what I think of as the canon of generally acknowledged ‘standard’ large choral works. [‘Large’ in the sense of performance time, also that they are works which can be performed by a largish choir, even if they were not written for one.] I now feel I can form an informed view on which are my favourites – the ones that I feel really excited about when I am asked to sing them – because they’re unlikely to be supplanted by anything I’ve never sung. I selected a ‘top 10’ and here they are, alphabetically by composer:<\/p>\n
I’m pleased by the range of nationalities and traditions represented here. You might ask ‘Where is Messiah<\/i>?’, and my answer would be ‘Probably at no. 11’. But I can’t put my hand on my heart and say I prefer it to any of the ten on my list. Others which just missed the cut are Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610<\/em> and Brahms’ German Requiem<\/em>.<\/p>\n Obviously no two singers will agree on this sort of list. If you want to know what I like about these pieces, you may get some idea from reading my accounts of performances of them here. I have sung all of them within the lifetime of the blog, with the exception of Mozart’s Requiem<\/em>, which I performed just before I started it and which I shall sing again in March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January is always a quiet month for performance (although I have one new venture I’ll write about fairly soon) so time to write some more general posts I’ve been saving up for a while. Singing Mahler 2 near the end … Continue reading