Don Giovanni: Rodin meets Velasquez

Posted on December 9, 2011 by vhk10

It’s a bit like what they say about rats: you’re never far from a performance of Don Giovanni. This is one of my favourite operas, certainly my favourite by Mozart, and shamefully I’d never seen it.  At last I took the opportunity and went with my daughter to Welsh National Opera’s production when it visited Bristol.

I won’t use this post to comment much on the music; I was generally happy with singing and playing, though there were occasional waverings in tuning and I thought Robin Tritschler’s Don Ottavio a bit lightweight. But then he’s meant to be a bit of a wimp.

My problem with this performance (and this is borne out by the reviews) was largely a lack of consistency in the production.  The costumes and styling of the singers were beautifully detailed and evoked the Spain of a century or so before Mozart, complete with mantillas, pannier skirts and pointy beards.  But the set was based on Rodin’s Gates of Hell, and other Rodin statues did duty as makeshift furniture.  Now I don’t have a problem with directors applying an out-of-period concept to an opera, though they do have to sell it to me.  If the singers had been wearing more generic costume the effect wouldn’t have been so jarring, but in this case two very different time periods were being evoked simultaneously.

There was also some inconsistency among the acting styles: most were naturalistic, but Nuccia Focile’s Donna Elvira was much more histrionic.  I wasn’t very convinced either by the Commendatore’s statue coming to life.  In a set populated by real statues, he was obviously ‘whited up’ to resemble one, but ended up looking like someone trying to look like a statue.

So probably best to concentrate on the music and not look to hard at the stage, which is what I did.

Some other opinions: Independent, Observer, Guardian and Telegraph.

Coming up: reports of a whole lot of concerts from Bath’s Mozartfest.

Posted in going to operas | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Fauré for All Souls

Posted on November 15, 2011 by vhk10

I joined the Bathwick choirs and friend for a liturgical performance of Fauré’s Requiem for All Souls’ Day. We sang the Libera Me early on in the service, which at least prevents you from feeling that this piece only takes off in the sixth movement!

If you have one or more Bathwick copies of Duruflé’s Requiem, please return them. They went missing a few years ago. No one would want music in their choir library that really belonged elsewhere.

Posted in singing at services | Tagged , | Leave a comment

I attend a Choral Evensong broadcast

Posted on November 11, 2011 by vhk10

For many years I’ve followed Radio 3’s Choral Evensong broadcasts, and have listened to them whenever possible.  I’d never been to one – why bother when Radio 3 brings it into your own home?  But I made a special case for the recent broadcast from Merton College, Oxford, where I was once a student and sang in the choir.

The service was a mixture of old (Victoria O quam gloriosum, and Smith responses) conducted by Peter Philips and new(er) (Howells in G and Vaughan Williams’ Valiant-for-Truth) conducted by Ben Nicholas.  I also appreciated having the full psalms for the day.  The choir weren’t in their usual stalls, but a little further west, nearer the organ, and arranged in a U formation across the chapel, with microphones at the apex. This had the effect of drastically cutting back on the resonance of the Chapel, both in the building and on air.

I was very impressed with the standard, which didn’t seem to me to have the common college choir problem of relatively weak tenors and basses (though I learn from a message board that there was some back-row reinforcement on the day).  Tuning, blend, ensemble seemed to come together effortlessly and the service flowed in a calm and reverent way without lengthy descriptions of the venue or pointless descants.  I have only two minor criticisms.  One is that the service ran for only 50 minutes and there would have been time for an office hymn as well as the one at the end.  Also, I thought that the choir was slightly out with the organ at one point in the Nunc Dimittis; I would lay the blame for this largely on the instrument, which is badly located and scheduled for replacement. When I was a student it had no CCTV, just a mirror and we hardly ever used it for accompanying anthems or canticles (when we did canticle settings, that is!)

After the service I was a guest at the launch party for the choir’s new CD.  Here I was able to mix with some members of the choir and other guests, and fortunately the conversation was mostly about music, rather than about my job, or my interlocutor’s in-laws, or some other less interesting topic.

I learned more about how the choir works these days.  It appears that most of those who aren’t choral scholars aren’t Mertonians. This contrasts with what I found in Cambridge, where I once auditioned for one of the better chapel choirs and was told that I would have been good enough if I’d been a member of the College, but that they required a higher standard from people outside!  But it does also recall the Merton choir as it was when I came up, which included a large proportion of non-Mertonians; I think this was largely a hangover from the time when the College did not admit women but had a mixed choir, so it had to take women from elsewhere.  Current members of the choir also got to hear from me about what the choir was like when I sang in it, and were duly appalled that we only sang a proper Mag and Nunc setting once a year!

Posted in broadcasts, going to services | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

a long day at Guildford

Posted on November 7, 2011 by vhk10

The Erleigh Cantors arrived at Guildford Cathedral at 8.30 a.m. and we finally left about 7.45 in the evening after singing three services (with a couple of free hours in the afternoon).

This event featured music by a number of famous composers.  Our Mass setting was Haydn’s Little Organ Mass, at Mattins we sang Vaughan Williams Te Deum in G and the evensong anthem was Bach’s Lobet den Herrn.  I hadn’t sung any of the Bach motets for a while, but this one was thoroughly drilled into me in my Cambridge days, so no danger of singing a B flat for a B natural or any similar mistake.  More of a challenge was keeping both sides and the organ together in such a broad space.

I’d never sung Poulenc’s Salve Regina before, though it wasn’t hard to learn as it was full of his characteristic turns of phrase.  Like the Schütz motet we sang from the same book a few months ago, it reserves its highest note for the final phrase (at least in my part).  Not quite a new piece, but I had not sung Blitheman’s In pace for a very long time, probably not since my early student days.

The Erleigh Cantors have done a lot of Kenneth Leighton, but rather surprisingly until now neither of his canticle settings.  We used the first ‘Magdalen College’ set at Evensong.  Other twentieth-century repertoire was the Sumsion responses and And I saw a new heaven by Bainton.

Evensong was the first time I’d sung at Guildford with the lights on, which enabled me to appreciate the changing patterns on the cloth which hangs behind the altar.  A Canon of Guildford is about to move to our church, so she should feel at home with our liturgically-themed lighting!

Posted in singing at services | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wakefield falls

Posted on October 31, 2011 by vhk10

Long-term readers of this blog will know of my ambition to perform in all 42 Church of England Cathedrals, and that since I sang in Leicester in June only two remain. I seized the opportunity to join a ‘come and sing’ performance of the Messiah in one of these, Wakefield.

We were accompanied by the Cathedral organ (a rather temperamental beast tuning-wise, if some of the notices warning not to leave certain doors near it open were to be believed).  Our conductor was the Cathedral organist, Tom Moore.  Most of us were Messiah veterans; I put up my hand after a moment’s thought when those who’d sung the work more than ten times were invited to identify themselves.

In fact this performance was only of parts 1 and 2.  We lost And he shall purify from part 1, but otherwise the cuts were pretty standard ones, and we did get some numbers such as Lift up your heads and The Lord gave the word which are often missing.  We coped with some pretty brisk tempi, with tenors and basses helped by some reinforcement from the Cathedral choir.  As seems usual in Northern come-and-sings, refreshments were laid on for us for a modest cost between rehearsal and performance.

So only Bradford Cathedral remains.  I shall concentrate my energies on finding a suitable event there to attach myself to.

Posted in singing at services | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

LPs: frivolities at the end

Posted on October 25, 2011 by vhk10

There were still a few discs of music, mostly of a lighter variety. A four-disc set of Viennese waltzes, marches and polkas by assorted composers.  Four sets of Gilbert and Sullivan, mostly with Sargent and Glyndebourne.  The only recording I myself am singing on, a disc made by Corpus Christi College choir, Cambridge, in 1987, which I enjoyed more than I expected to on re-hearing, though I still think that Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia (which we also performed at the May Week post-concert drinks in Old Court) didn’t really come off.  (The disc was described in a review at the time as ‘a recommendable release’, though I’m not sure it sold very many copies).

Then there was the purely humorous in the shape of the two Flanders and Swann recordings, which were quickly snaffled up by the children once transferred.  And a novelty disc of mechanical instruments from the Paul Corin Collection (threatened at the time we bought the LP on holiday, but still in existence).  The remaining recordings were outside the subject scope of this blog.

Posted in recordings | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

LPs batch 31: choral heavyweights

Posted on October 25, 2011 by vhk10

Now well past the 200 LP mark.  Bringing up the rear of the ‘serious’ music were two sets: a second recording of Verdi’s Requiem, with Guilini and the Philharmonia (for good measure, we also had the same forces doing the Quattro Pezzi Sacri).  And a set of Bach’s St. John Passion from Hungary which I bought while on a choir tour there. The other disc was Die schöne Müllerin with Fischer-Dieskau and Moore.

Posted in recordings | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

LPs batch 30: the end approaches

Posted on October 25, 2011 by vhk10

By now I was beginning to get onto some of the miscellaneous discs which collected music by various composers.  In this case two discs of assorted anthems from Jesus College, Cambridge (with whom my college neighbour sang): Seek Ye the Lord and Vox Dicentis: Clama. There was what I think was a Reader’s Digest collection of Strauss waltzes, including some relatively obscure ones.  And finally we got to the end of the Russian discs: Tchaikovsky’s violin and first piano concertos from the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony from Rostropovich and the Moscow Philharmonic.

Posted in recordings | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

LPs batch 29: Vivaldi

Posted on October 25, 2011 by vhk10

The baroque repertoire wasn’t represented strongly in our LPs, but we did have two discs of Vivaldi’s concertos L’estro armonico.  (These proved rather tricky to put on CD because they turned out to have persistent clicks).  The very last of our numerous Chopin discs was Krystian Zimerman playing the Waltzes.  The rest of this batch was symphonic: Brahms’ fourth symphony and Tragic Overture with the Berlin Philharmonic and Karajan, Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony (Concertgebouw/Haitink) and his Manfred symphony with Jansons and the Oslo Philharmonic (I’m afraid that this symphony is a bit lost on me).

Posted in recordings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New anthems by Shephard and Ives

Posted on October 21, 2011 by vhk10

New to me, that is.  I had a busy weekend of services in two different churches.  In one, I was introduced to Shephard’s The Secret of Christ (you’ll have to listen to the anthem to find out what it is) and Ives’ Ubi Caritas which makes a change from the usual soprano-unfriendly Duruflé.

The other service had rather more standard fare, though not pieces I’m used to performing in Bath: Stanford in A and Bairstow’s Blessed City, Heavenly Salem.  We were fortunate in having Dr Anthony Crossland as our conductor.  For this service we were permitted to wear academic hoods, and his Lambeth DMus (with the hood in Oxford style) was easily the winner.

Posted in singing at services | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Bath Recital Artists’ Trust

Posted on October 13, 2011 by vhk10

This organises a regular and well-advertised series of recitals in the Pump Room, given by up-and-coming performers. My husband received a pair of complimentary tickets to the piano recital by Christopher Guild – we’re not sure why. Perhaps they selected some Bath University academics or members of the mailing list at the Festivals Box Office?

Anyway he went along and enjoyed the recital, though a bit tired to take it in after doing a 20-mile sponsored walk earlier in the day. The programme was a rather mixed bag comprising the Moonlight Sonata, Debussy’s Children’s Corner, Liszt’s paraphrase on a waltz from Faust, and Reubke’s sonata in B flat minor. Reubke is one of those cult composers among organists – his organ sonata based on Ps. 94 is mentioned by them in awe-struck tones – but this sonata was rather rambling. The Debussy came off best, in my husband’s opinion.

Another unusual feature of the concert was the birthday cake for all in the interval, as the event was also in honour of a major birthday for the organiser of the series.

Posted in going to concerts | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

for whom the bell tolls

Posted on October 6, 2011 by vhk10

On September 10th I took part in a ‘come and sing’ Verdi Requiem at Bristol Cathedral with the New Bristol Sinfonia and soloists, presented as a 9/11 memorial concert. I passed up a chance to sing this work earlier in the year and realised it was a very long time since I’d sung it. As I transferred a couple of recordings to CD over the summer, I regretted this and so seized the opportunity to bridge this gap.

The ‘come and sing’ approach might not be thought to work too well for this particular piece, but I think some of the Bristol choral societies must have done it recently. While some of my neighbours were new to the work and others (like me) had not performed it for a while, the level of familiarity with it seemed to be very high. I think it’s also true that once you know the Verdi Requiem, it’s with you for life.

I go back quite a way with the conductor, Mark Lee, as he was organ scholar of my Cambridge college. He led a briskly efficient rehearsal in the afternoon (there had been an optional one earlier in the week).  Although I thought of our conductor as not one for taking risks, there was no prohibition on the alternative chorus soprano line near the end of the work, so several of us sopranos made a top C pact and did it.  I hadn’t sung it before, though I can’t now remember whether it was because I didn’t have the confidence or because the conductor explicitly told us not to.

We had a sizeable audience (unlike the performance I declined to join earlier in the year).  The concert had started at 7.30 and had a short pause in the middle though no interval.  The audience was expected to wait a moment at the end before applauding, but what actually happened was I think unscripted. As the final chord died away, the Cathedral clock struck the hour and then chimed nine.  It would detract from the efforts of the performers to say this was the defining moment of the evening, but there couldn’t have been a more appropriate ending.

Posted in singing in concerts | Tagged , , | Leave a comment