behind the Royal Crescent

Posted on June 2, 2011 by vhk10

The now annual ‘Party in the City’ which opens the Bath ‘MusicFest’ (as it is currently styled) booked the Chandos Singers to perform in the garden behind the Royal Crescent Hotel. We were the last performers at this venue and it was getting distinctly cold by the end. Still, we had an audience throughout, and they weren’t all guests at the hotel or friends and family of the performers, as a family I know turned up unsolicited!

We performed a mixture of unaccompanied pieces from various periods. I won’t go through them all, just single out a few. The Chandos ‘signature tune’ is En Hiver by Hindemith, a setting of Rilke which frequently gets trotted out when the choir does a set somewhere. Among the sacred pieces we performed were two new composers for me: Pierre de la Rue (represented by his Ave Maria) and Waller Goodworth’s setting of Ut queant laxis. Our final number was ‘Elibama’ by Stephen Hatfield, a mixture of Madagascan and Yiddish (!) melodies written for the Amabile Youth Singers. If you do crosswords and Scrabble, you’ll have worked out how the piece gets its name. (‘A-ma-bi-leh’ is also worked into the nonsense syllables at various points). Perhaps we should have renamed it ‘Sodnach’.

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LPs batch 27: forever in the catalogue

Posted on May 7, 2011 by vhk10

Not much early music among our LPs, but I hit a chunk of it here with two lots of Monteverdi. Sadly, I think the eponymous Monteverdi Choir’s performance of the Vespers of 1610 (the earlier, studio, recording) is in too bad a state to be worth transferring. I can buy it on CD, or replace it with another recording. Our other recording of Monteverdi is his third book of madrigals, conducted by Leppard; this must be one of the longest LPs in the collection, at well over an hour.

Another recording which will always stay in the catalogue is Kathleen Ferrier’s recital of (mostly) folksongs, the only mono classical music recording in our collection.

The rest of this batch was the Beaux Arts Trio’s recording of the Schubert piano trio repertoire (including the ‘Notturno’) and the Vienna Philharmonic and Kertesz playing Brahms (Third Symphony and St. Anthony Variations).

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LPs batch 26: more sticking points

Posted on April 30, 2011 by vhk10

I actually recorded these LPs some months ago, but am behind with writing them up. This batch began with a Hungaroton transfer of Beethoven violin sonatas performed by Dénes Kovacs and Mihaly Bächer. Some of the other discs in the batch proved to be problematic. Solti and the VPO doing Schubert’s ‘Great’ C major symphony had to be re-recorded after it had some peculiar crackles on it. Another recording of the same symphony by Haitink and the Concertgebouw fared rather better. Two other discs in the batch stuck: firstly, Winchester Cathedral Choir singing Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary and some assorted other baroque anthems (including several real favourites of mine). Croft’s Funeral Sentences proved to be impossible to rescue, but fortunately the rest of the recording could be transferred, although it’s pretty crackly because I played it a lot. Dvořák’s 7th symphony (with Neumann and the Czech Philharmonic) also stuck until recorded on a different setting.

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I was glad

Posted on April 22, 2011 by vhk10

The Chandos Singers’ latest concert consisted of settings of Psalm 122, plus a parody Mass, by various composers (but not Parry). It was the first time I’d performed in the Magdalen Chapel on Holloway, a small venue but acoustically pleasant. Future audiences might care to know that if it is still light and the weather is good, they can enjoy one of the best of all views over Bath while they sip their interval drink.

The first half began with plainchant and then consisted of Victoria’s three-choir mass Laetatus sum and the motet on which it is based. I once sang another three-choir Mass setting by Victoria, his Missa pro Victoria, but this one was melodically more interesting.

After the interval came settings by other composers, beginning with my favourite Howells anthem, O pray for the peace of Jerusalem. The other highlight for me was Purcell’s I was glad, a piece that really requires you to listen hard to the rest of the choir. Much of the rest was new to me: along with Blow, Tallis and Boyce there were settings by Alessandro Scarlatti and those Chandos favourites Michna and Gorzynski.

Is there a ‘curse of Chandos’? Our previous home at Holy Trinity Church has recently closed, and the company which runs our next performance venue, the Royal Crescent Hotel, has just gone into administration. (Sadly, I think it’s just that so many things are closing in the downturn that your chances of being involved with one or more are high.)

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I get to hear Eternal Light

Posted on April 9, 2011 by vhk10

This piece by Howard Goodall seems to be flavour of the month right now. It received two performances on the south side of Lansdown Hill within four weeks, the second being by CanZona. It formed the second part of a concert which had a mixed bag of Byrd, Elgar and Walton in the first half (including Let all the world by Walton which I didn’t know). Eternal Light is itself a bit of a mixed bag, including a variety of styles. I’d probably enjoy singing it if I didn’t have to devote too much rehearsal time to it. CanZona benefited from my having declined to hear the other performance of the piece, as had I gone to that I probably wouldn’t have wanted to hear another so soon afterwards.

Meanwhile others in the family went to Welsh National Opera’s Il trovatore in Bristol, which they enjoyed. I myself saw this production on a previous outing. They were particularly impressed by David Soar in the role of Ferrando, though the four principals were all satisfactory.

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Bath loses a music shop

Posted on April 1, 2011 by vhk10

Duck Son and Pinker closed abruptly today. I was an occasional customer for sheet music and CDs, although it was never my first choice for CDs and I sometimes found the staff didn’t know their way round the sheet music stock (though this hasn’t happened recently).

There is another instrument shop in Bath, so we can still cope if the mouthpiece gets stuck in my son’s trumpet again. I realise that CD sales face stiff competition from the internet, but surely a place the size of Bath and with this city’s musical culture could support a sheet music shop? Or are sheet music sales subsidised in practice by sales of CDs? (And now I think of it, Manchester city centre lost one of its two sheet music shops in the mid-1990’s.)

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brass players and drinking

Posted on March 25, 2011 by vhk10

My son is learning the trumpet, and has now been told to ‘have a drink after you finish practising’. Of course water is what is meant, but it explains a lot!

In fairness to brass players everywhere, I will recount what happened at an orchestral concert which I sang in a few years ago (but within the lifetime of this blog). After the interval the conductor came on stage, raised their baton, looked round the orchestra and found that there was an entire section missing. Turned out both flute players were still in the pub and they had to be hastily extracted before the performance could begin.

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half a concert in St. Stephen’s

Posted on March 5, 2011 by vhk10

I went to hear A Handful of Singers perform some recent British choral music at St. Stephen’s Church, Lansdown. The first half of the programme included one piece I’d performed myself – Rutter’s Hymn to the Creator of Light – four Marian motets by Bob Chilcott (I think I prefer him in jazz mode, though), an Agnus Dei by the choir’s accompanist Jamie Hamilton and Into Thy Hands by Jonathan Dove. The conductor was Christopher Finch and the ubiquitous David Bednall, who has already accompanied my singing services in Bristol Cathedral with two different choirs this year, was playing the organ! The standard was impressive and I completed a form asking to go on their mailing list.

I sang with this choir in a concert in this church two years ago, when we performed Kodály’s Missa Brevis and Fauré’s Requiem. But when the choir were mingling with the audience in the interval none of them noticed or spoke to me. Discouraged by this, and deciding I didn’t after all want to listen to Howard Goodall’s music afterwards, I called it a night and went home.

A postscript here.

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Svyat! Svyat! Svyat!

Posted on March 5, 2011 by vhk10

Singing familiar texts in an unfamiliar language can make them feel altogether different. I know very little Russian, so there was a lot of grappling with the Old Church Slavonic texts of Rachmaninov’s Vespers (strictly the ‘All-Night Vigil’), which I performed in Bath Abbey last weekend with the South West Festival Chorus, and I wouldn’t claim the words tripped easily off my tongue. But ‘Svyat!’ sounds much beefier and more dynamic than ‘Holy’, ‘Sanctus’ or their close cognates.

I sang the first part of the Vespers some years ago on a Good Friday in Wells Cathedral with the Bath Camerata, and had performed the ‘Magnificat’, but had never done a complete performance. It really is a long haul, especially towards the end; the last three movements have no breaks from singing at all. Perhaps in liturgical performance they were be performed over a period of time so the singers could catch their breath. I have to admit that I don’t care for the last movement much. I think of it as ‘troika music’ – it rattles along in a jolly sort of way as if you’re bouncing along in a sleigh. It is possible to write great, fast religious music, but this isn’t an example of it.

The performance was written up in the Bath Chronicle and also on Seen and Heard International (ignore the page title). I’ll now address a point from this latter review.

The reviewer comments on the relative lack of men, in particular tenors. This isn’t a very recent phenomenon; I had the same difficulties recruiting for a large chorus at university. There were even some known tenors who seemed to think it was somehow sissy and insisted on singing bass. Our band of tenors on Saturday managed valiantly even if they were outnumbered. (And it was a group of them singing in the Nunc Dimittis, rather than a soloist). The reviewer also picked up that our conductor’s (Gavin Carr’s) favourite movement was the penultimate one. (I myself am torn between the Magnificat – for my money the greatest setting of this text – and the wonderful key changes in ‘O Gladsome Light’).

After the interval I joined other choir members at the east end and enjoyed Peter Donohoe’s performances of the Third Piano Concerto with Jason Thornton and the (mostly student) Bath Spa Symphony Orchestra. With closed-circuit screens it was possible to see his fingers turn to a blur in the fast passages. Hard to believe that the same composer wrote all the music on the programme; and his songs show a different side again.

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a quick return to Bristol

Posted on February 23, 2011 by vhk10

I was back in Bristol Cathedral – this time with Priory Voices – to sing a weekend of services. Most of the music, such as Brahms’ Geistliches Lied and Victoria’s mass O Quam Gloriosum was very familiar to me. Smart’s Evening Canticles in B flat seemed very familiar too, except that according to my records I’ve only ever sung them once before. Now when can I get another opportunity to sing Smart in G? As it happened I also knew the most obscure piece on the programme, Déodat de Séverac’s Tantum Ergo, from my Cambridge days.

We were energetically accompanied by the Cathedral’s assistant organist, David Bednall. I’m scheduled to be back in Bristol yet again at the end of July with the Erleigh Cantors.

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A Royal Wedding anthem

Posted on January 30, 2011 by vhk10

Today I joined the choir of St. Peter’s Church, Caversham, for evensong at Bristol Cathedral. Our anthem was Let the people praise thee O God by Mathias, and this set some of us wondering who might be writing music for the forthcoming royal wedding. Like the designer of the dress, this information hasn’t been made public yet. I wonder if it will produce a piece that will still have a place in the repertory thirty years later, as Mathias’ has? It would be nice to think so.

Our introit was (not very surprisingly) When to the Temple Mary went by Eccard and the canticles Walmisley in D minor. The responses were Radcliffe’s, written in 1972. Were these the last to set ‘praised’ as two syllables?

A combination of a large choir and short stalls meant that unusually I was not in the front row, so a bit more work was needed to watch the conductor. And this was the first time since a a very hot 2003 that I have worn a surplice to sing a service, and I think possibly only the second time I have ever done so.

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The Genius of Mozart

Posted on January 14, 2011 by vhk10

I rather dipped into this 12-day trawl through all of Mozart on BBC Radio 3, rather than listening to chunks. There were some real high points; I enjoyed the broadcasts of Entführung (especially as I happened to be having a kebab night that evening) and New College’s account of the Requiem with male soloists.

But I still felt the comparable surveys of Beethoven and Bach worked better. As I remarked before, there’s an awful lot of juvenilia to be got through compared with those two, and Mozart’s style doesn’t evolve as much as Beethoven’s, so there’s a lack of variety after a while. Also if you tuned in at the wrong time you got single movements instead of complete works. And despite the Köchel numbers going up to 626, you didn’t have to listen much to start hearing the same pieces more than once; this happened to me with the C minor piano fantasia (one of my Grade 8 piano pieces), the D minor piano concerto and some of the songs. I think this was largely due to allowing listeners and performers to nominate or perform favourite pieces by Mozart, after his entire output had already been programmed at other times.

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