Other recordings I’ve made

Posted on January 11, 2020 by vhk10

As I’m on the verge of recording a CD, it’s time to look back at other recordings I’ve made. The new recording with Bristol Choral Society will be the sixth professional one I’ve made. The others (mostly recorded when I was a student at Cambridge) are:

  • SS Wesley and the Choral Service A cassette made with the choir of Christ’s College (with whom I sang at the time). It included the first recording of the Communion Service in E, the rest of the Service in E and a couple of anthems including Ascribe Unto the Lord, in which I took the 1st treble part in the long verse section.
  • The Chapel Choir of Corpus Christi College Cambridge We might have got a more attention-grabbing title by quoting from one of the texts we sang: White as an orchid she rode quite naked, for example. This was made in the same week as the first, with very small forces. It was recommended by Choir and Organ although I don’t know how you would have got a copy if you weren’t in or passing Corpus. Piles of LPs (our recording was made as this format was dying out) sat in the porters’ lodge for some years, but when I recently asked Corpus archives didn’t have their own copy, so I sent them one transferred to CD.
  • A recording based around 6 motets by Professor Edward Dent, with the choir of St Catharine’s College. This had the most professional production standards of any recording I’ve made until now, but was never released: the Director of Music was seriously ill and the organ scholar who conducted never edited the results. The recording company (I forget which it was) didn’t seem to mind. I felt sorry for the regular singers who’d been performing these rather strange and difficult pieces all through the previous year only for the results not to be used. More information on what was on this disc and the Corpus one can be found in an earlier article I wrote.
  • a recording of Messiah taken from a live performance given by Manchester Cathedral Cantata Choir and on sale the following day locally. This was an attempt (I believe successful) at breaking the record for the quickest release of a CD after it was recorded.
  • Here is the Little Door, a CD of Christmas music, distributed locally, by the Chantry Singers of Bath.
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Round-up of 2019

Posted on January 2, 2020 by vhk10

This wasn’t a particularly notable year with obvious high points, rather one in which I revisited places (Truro Cathedral) and works I had not encountered for a long time. The latter included three Requiems (Mozart, Brahms and Howells’), the last’s anthem Take Him Earth for Cherishing and Vivaldi’s Magnificat.

But there were some pieces that were new to me: Handel’s Dettingen Te Deum, Copland’s In the Beginning and, at last, William Byrd’s Great Service (see below). I performed in Christchurch Priory for the first time. Various solo opportunities cropped up during the year.

I got to opera performances at Covent Garden and WNO, but didn’t do so well for concerts.

A couple of awards:

Obstructive Fellow Singer Award. I wish there wasn’t an obvious candidate for this every year. This time it was someone whose folder blocked out my view of the conductor in performance (we hadn’t used folders in rehearsal). The person concerned didn’t seem to understand why this should bother me. On the other hand I proved to be the obstructive singer to someone whose hearing aid objected to anyone singing above an F near them.

The Poulenc Gloria Award For unconnected chances to sing the same piece at around the same time. Byrd’s Great Service has been top of my church music wishlist for a couple of decades, and then I was invited to sing it with two different groups within the space of a month. (Fortunately I was able to accept one of these invitations.)

2020 I hope has some interesting developments in store, to be revealed in due course. It begins with making my first professional recording in a long time, a return to St Mary Redcliffe after some years, and a new work to me: Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms.

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two carol services

Posted on December 27, 2019 by vhk10

I’ll do a very quick round up of Christmas music. I miss the carol burn-out suffered by many people I know by going away for Christmas but I did sing in our Advent carol service. The new piece this year was one of the Merton settings of the ‘O’ Antiphons, O radix Jesse by Rihards Dubra. We are promised others from the set in future years.

St David’s Cathedral offered the usual Christmas services, and we queued for over an hour to secure a pair of nave seats for their 9 Lessons and Carols. The choir were on especially good form this year. For variety we had Darke in F on Christmas morning rather than the Little Organ Mass.

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a belated return to Vivaldi’s Magnificat

Posted on December 9, 2019 by vhk10

Vivaldi’s Magnificat must, rather unfairly, get a fraction of the performances of his Gloria. I sang it many years ago in Cambridge – conducted by John Alldis, no less – I think to boost the sound of the singers on a choral course for Americans held at Girton College. Despite the passage of time, when I came to sing it again I quickly remembered I’d sung it before. It exists in various versions and we included one of the customised arias written for Vivaldi’s pupils.

The occasion was a concert by CanZona in Winsley. The lightly Christmas-themed programme also included another Magnificat, attributed to Pergolesi, Victoria’s O Quam Gloriosum and two more recent pieces, Finzi’s In Terra Pax and a new setting of Ave maris stella by Richard Gabe, a member of the choir. The Finzi was still fresh in my mind from Bristol Choral Society’s performance two years ago. I hadn’t realised his stamping ground was close to the Berkshire/Wiltshire section of the A4, and I shall think of him whenever I drive that way.

I was one half of a soprano duet in the Vivaldi and also took a quartet part in the Gabe. We were fortunate in having some string players as well as keyboard accompaniment.

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two lots of carols for the Christmas market

Posted on December 2, 2019 by vhk10

It’s a few years since I sang carols at Bath’s Christmas market. This year I had two shots, back to back! Firstly I did some moonlighting by running through a few standard carols with the combined forces of some of Grenville Jones’ choirs, under the arch in Abbey Yard. Then I moved round the corner to the West front of the Abbey for an hour’s stint with Bath Cantata Group, in which we sang from Carols for Choirs 1 in order, picking out carols selected by our conductor. Not necessarily just the popular ones – I don’t think I’ve sung the Zither Carol since I was a student. We had an appreciative audience, though it was something of a graveyard slot as the market was winding down. It’s good to be able to contribute to live music-making at the market, particularly when I won’t be singing in the choir at any Christmas carol services.

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Brahms with 4 hands

Posted on November 30, 2019 by vhk10

I have sung Brahms’ German Requiem within the lifetime of this blog, but it was not long after I started it! Instead I’ve twice attended a series of rehearsals with Bristol Choral Society for performances I couldn’t take part in. So I really felt I was owed a chance to sing this in concert, and it came when I rejoined Bath Cantata Group for a performance in St Stephen’s Lansdown conducted by Neil Moore.

This was the version accompanied by piano duet, which Bristol Choral Society intended to do a couple of years ago, but didn’t because Colston Hall became available and we hired an orchestra. (Some years ago I was also supposed to be involved in a Bath Camerata Good Friday performance of this version, but wasn’t invited because of some admin hiccup. By the time this was realised, I’d missed too many rehearsals and I got a profuse apology.) Obviously it lacks the full weight, colour and volume of the orchestral version but it works well with a smaller choir and some details stand out more. It is also easier in some places to feel the pulse with a more percussive accompaniment.

Our soprano soloist was Julia O’Connor, familiar to anyone who regularly goes to Bath Opera productions; the baritone was Timothy Dickinson. The piano duet was played by Jacquelyn Bevan and Will Ashworth (the choir’s regular accompanist). I am full of admiration for the amount of concentration required to do it justice – greater than even the amount of stamina required for the choral parts (I regard this as the most demanding of the major choral works in this respect). As if that wasn’t enough, they opened the concert with Schubert’s Fantasy in F minor, a piece I used to play back in the day.

We had a sizeable audience. I’ve only sung rarely before in St Stephen’s, the last time being with A Handful of Singers (as they then were). It is a sympathetic acoustic although I missed a light whose bulb had gone out between midweek rehearsal and concert.

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accompanying The Women of Ryazan

Posted on November 28, 2019 by vhk10

The silver screen came back to Christ Church for another silent film accompanied on the organ, as part of the Bath Film Festival. This time David Bednall played for the remarkable 1927 Russian film by Olga Preobrazhenskaya, The Women of Ryazan. His improvising style was rather different to David Briggs’, being more reliant on creating a general mood and only rarely quoting other pieces of music.

There may be more such events in future, and after two dark films it might be interesting to hear improvisation to, say, a historical drama or a comedy.

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rehearsing but not performing

Posted on November 25, 2019 by vhk10

Fortunately I rarely have to pull out of performances because of illness, but a number of times in the last few years I’ve gone to rehearsals for a concert I wasn’t singing in. Twice the work concerned was the German Requiem and part of the reason for rehearsing was to build up familiarity with a piece I’d eventually get to perform again. (And I now have: post to follow).

Apart from this, another reason to go to such rehearsals is to get the benefit of the conductor’s expertise. And to get to know a new piece that you haven’t encountered before. This was the case this autumn as I went to rehearsals for Bristol Choral Society’s next concert, which consisted largely of pieces that we will record in the New Year. Two that we aren’t recording were a pair by Eric Whitacre: Cloudburst and Water Night, settings of overlapping texts by Octavio Paz. His early work Cloudburst was especially intriguing as it was more experimental and I haven’t really been stretched much in this way since I was in the Chandos Singers. It would spoil the surprise for those who don’t know it, if I tried to describe the ways in which the sonic range of this piece is extended beyond standard choral singing. At any rate, I felt a bit sorry that the later Whitacre pieces I’ve sung have been rather more conventional.

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railway bitonality

Posted on November 20, 2019 by vhk10

My recent visit to Japan (the previous one was just before I started this blog) didn’t have a great deal of musical content, but I was able to observe again one feature of travel there: the use of distinctive melodies often associated with a particular route or station and played over the public address system. Many of them sound as if they could have been written by John Rutter. There are if anything now more of them than before. Indeed Nippori (a suburban station in Tokyo near where we were staying) appeared to have one in the station building and a different one out on the platform, with aurally chaotic results if both were played at the same time.

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the animals get it right

Posted on November 6, 2019 by vhk10

I once heard this as a comment on The Cunning Little Vixen, which I went to see at the Wales Millennium Centre. (For some reason Welsh National Opera thinks that Bristol audiences can’t handle Janáček and don’t bring their productions of his operas to the Hippodrome).

We have at least Vixen (and Fox), Badger and Jay visiting our back garden. Our local Sharpears steals dog toys from the neigbours and brings them under a large tree there for her cubs to play with. She (or Fox) has also somehow worked out how to swing the ‘lockable’ handle on the Council-issued food waste container up and over to get at the contents, and is now thwarted by a double layer of containers we call the ‘fox box’.

The opera’s cast, led by Aoife Miskelly in the title role, were mostly young up-and-coming singers, and were required to show considerable athleticism. I’m not very familiar with this score but couldn’t fault the singing and playing (Tomáš Hanus conducted). This production has been around since 1980 and has the Pountney trademark umbrellas, here impersonating flowers. Badger’s/Sharpears’ den must now remind quite a lot of us of the Teletubby house.

Unlike previous stagings of this production, this one was sung in Czech, thereby preserving the composer’s skilful word-setting. The libretto has been tweaked a bit by Jiri Zahrádka and I would be interested to know how extensive this is and why it was done. Perhaps some politically incorrect humour has gone, or maybe an attempt to make it more topical? Nevertheless, it steers the fine line between allowing the animals enough human emotions and behaviour for us to empathise with them, while not disregarding the gulf between the human and animal worlds, with the latter’s brief lives and continual struggle for survival. (A convenient piece of artistic licence is that sometimes the humans and animals understand one another’s speech and sometimes not. How does the Forester come to know Sharpears’ name?)

WNO is following this with The Makropoulos Case next season and I don’t intend to miss that even if it means another trip to Cardiff.

Some reviews:

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the Great Service

Posted on October 20, 2019 by vhk10

Long-term readers of this blog will know that Byrd’s Great Service of evening canticles has long been on my wishlist of church music that I’d never sung. In the usual way, after years of waiting, and just as I was thinking of organising a performance myself, I got two independent invitations to sing it this month. The one I was able to accept came from the Laetare Singers who included it in a workshop conducted by Adrian Partington at St Peter’s, Henleaze. I signed up like a shot when I was given a flyer for this.

I had a slight head start with the Byrd as I have heard it many times (including a very duff performance at one of England’s premier church music establishments). It requires a long attention span and much concentration, especially as we were all invited to sing the verse sections.

An arrangement from Harvest Festival

An arrangement from Harvest Festival at St Peter’s Henleaze

I hadn’t sung Howells’ Take Him Earth for Cherishing since I was a student, and it was another piece I was very keen to sing. I’d never done the second soprano part, which has some decidedly non-contractual notes in. (Adrian Partington, a former pupil of Howells, explained why this was: HH composed at the piano). I equipped myself with a score beforehand to learn them and the 2nd altos behind me also came in handy.

Later we were introduced to early Hispanic liturgical music. I’d assumed this was the Iberian version of the Sarum Rite et al, but it is earlier and tantalisingly undecipherable. Rather the opposite of ancient Greek music, where we can read the notation but don’t have many actual scores. One thing that can be worked out is that it went in for extremely long melismas, reminding me a little of the meditative chants of some Eastern religious traditions. We sang three pieces by Alison Willis (who came along to talk about the project out of which they arose): psalm settings inspired by what we know about this murky area of church music.

We had light accompaniment in the performances at the end of the day, which was a relief to me as I’d have got very thrown in some of the high Howells entries if we’d slipped too far. (Pitch drop might however have suited a fellow singer who was clearly experiencing discomfort with her hearing aid if anyone near her sang above an F! There are surely few worse places for such a person than the middle of the front row of a soprano section.)

This handsome church – built more recently than its exterior would suggest – made a very good venue. They have a seriously skilled flower arranger there.

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Mahler meets Mr Profile

Posted on October 8, 2019 by vhk10

The recent work on our church organ was shown off in an inaugural recital by David Briggs, who also performed on it after a major rebuild a few years ago.

The first part consisted of the well-known Toccata and fugue in D minor attributed to JS Bach, then Vierne’s Carillon de Westminster and a transcription of Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

After the interval we watched the 1920 silent film ‘Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde’ as it would originally have been screened, with organ accompaniment. The star John Barrymore was definitely more Hyde than Jekyll, to judge by accounts of his life. Known as ‘Mr Profile’, he was often shown in this way on screen.

The improvisation opened by quoting Mahler 6, and I heard quotations by Wagner, Grieg, Elgar, Mozart and others among the purely improvised material. By the end, the promise made to us in advance had been fulfilled – one was not conscious of the organ music as an addition to the original film. A bit like becoming less aware of the puppetry during a performance of War Horse.

If you ever have the chance to hear David Briggs improvise accompaniment to a silent film (and wherever you are in the world he is quite likely to perform near you soon), take it. It’s an art form in itself. Meanwhile, David Bednall will be doing something similar in Christ Church during the Bath Film Festival.

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