plainchant in Winchester

The weekend after Salisbury I was in Winchester Cathedral with the Erleigh Cantors.

I don’t know whether this was a deliberate choice, but several pieces we sang were used or were inspired by plainchant. These included Naylor’s Evening Canticles in A, Bairstow’s Blessed City, heavenly Salem and Wood’s communion setting in the Phrygian Mode. A possible side effect was that the weekend was rather less strenuous than a Cathedral weekend with four services usually is.

The main new piece for me was Bairstow’s Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in B minor, which has been on my wishlist for some time. It’s more melismatic (in terms of number of notes per syllable) than some of his other settings, though again not hugely demanding vocally; the treble line only goes once above F sharp.

We also sang some early music: O clap your hands by Gibbons and the Ave Maria by Robert Parsons, who is something of a one-work composer (more pieces by him are extant, but I’ve never sung any of them). Also Sumsion’s Te Deum in G. Our responses were by Anthony Piccolo – notable for overlapping versicle and response, using a soloist other than the cantor and some unexpectedly quiet moments (e.g. at ‘because there is none other that fighteth for us…’). Our Communion motet was Leighton’s tricky Drop, drop, slow tears. So we were kept pretty busy, though I always feel short-changed if I sing a Cathedral evensong with less than 20 verses of psalmody, especially at a Cathedral where they normally do more.

There was clearly once competition among bishops of Winchester as to who could have the most ostentatious monument. One had a plaque with a large profile of himself placed in the nave (directly in my line of view on Sunday morning – I could have wished this particular Bishop had been better looking). A cenotaph to another fills much of the South Transept, where our weekend ended with tea provided after Sunday evensong.

follow the Vann

I rejoined the Peterborough Chamber Choir after a gap of a couple of years for a weekend in Salisbury Cathedral.

We began with a Weelkes evensong which paired his Short Service with Alleluia, I heard a voice.

I have the impression that Matins has been downgraded at Salisbury since my last visit (when I sang Elgar’s Te Deum at the service). We sang at just one Sunday morning service, a Eucharist with ordination. Salisbury has experimentally introduced a nave altar, but I gather that no really satisfactory place has been found to put the choir at services where it is used. We were on benches facing westwards just inside the quire area. Our communion was Stanley Vann’s ‘St. Paul’s’ setting. This setting seems to have fallen out of the repertoire everywhere which is a shame as there are some lovely moments such as the start of the Sanctus (though the first soprano part is high). The anthem O God which hast prepared by Edwards, was also new to me (another piece with a Peterborough connexion?)

At evensong we paired Victoria’s Magnificat on the First tone (which I’d sung with this choir before) with his setting of Lauda Sion Salvatorem. As before, I pondered on the fact that you are much more likely to hear performances of the music of this Spanish composer in his country’s old enemy, England (and usually in Protestant churches!) than in his native land. The Magnificat is an especially fine piece with a gradual increase of urgency and intensity as it proceeds. Lauda Sion Salvatorem is more bouncy and antiphonal. The Victoria Magnificat was paired with the Nunc from Gibbons’ Short Service.

The music for this weekend showed that the Renaissance period isn’t the easy option it sometimes seems. Both Weelkes’ Alleluia and the Victoria Magnificat are demanding pieces which lie high (at least in the keys in which we sang them).

A write-up of a weekend in Winchester Cathedral will follow soon.

another memorial service at Merton

I wrote earlier in the year about a memorial service I went to in Oxford. I was back again on Saturday for another such service, this time commemorating a contemporary and friend of mine who died before his time.

We kept the music simple; I and another friend sang the top two parts of Mozart’s Ave Verum as a duet, and there were also songs by Gounod and organ music by Bach. We were accompanied by the current organ scholar; earlier, I had heard the college choir singing at the end of an open rehearsal they were giving.

There were about a tenth of the number at the other service, but somehow both congregations seemed to be the right size for the chapel.

a controversial video

I went with a friend to the performance of Berg’s Wozzeck at the Royal Festival Hall which ended the Philharmonia and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s City of Dreams season.

I did some background reading for this by digging out my copy of Douglas Jarman’s Cambridge guide to the opera, which I acquired by an unusual route. I learnt a lot from the primary sources and analysis in this book, though there were topics it didn’t really touch on. I would rather that the long and elaborate account of the recovery of Büchner’s play (which doesn’t really have any bearing on the opera except for accounting for the existence of its source) had been dropped or abridged in favour of some discussion of the orchestration, or the allusions to other musical works.

The controversial aspect of this performance was the video which was projected behind the orchestra. I can’t comment much on this, because I decided that there was enough going on without it and decided to ignore it, which was fairly easy to do in the rear stalls. From what I saw out of the corner of my eye I got the impression it neither added nor detracted very much. I think the definitive comment on this video came from The Classical Source.

The performance was semi-staged, with the singers costumed and acting on a strip at the front of the platform. This entailed a certain amount of compromise, with the wood-chopping of the second scene becoming peeling potatoes and not too much dancing in the tavern scenes. But within these limitations there was still room for the essential relationships to come across.

With the orchestra liberated from the pit, it was possible to appreciate just how violent the score can get. (A usually rather neglected group of performers in this work, the chorus, also came over more clearly than they usually do.)

I had come to hear Simon Keenlyside in the title rôle and he did not disappoint, integrating a expressive range of vocal colours and techniques with the body language to match the text, perhaps most tellingly in his realisation of what he had done immediately after the murder. He was well supported by the rest of the cast, several of whom I’d heard in their rôles in other performances.

Four-star reviews appeared in the Telegraph and Guardian.

Brass in the Abbey

I went to hear the Bath Philharmonia (like the Festival, it’s gone in for abbreviating itself, as BathPhil) in the final concert of their summer series, in Bath Abbey. We lost the programmed Borodin overture, so the first half consisted of Beethoven’s 3rd piano concerto, with Peter Donohoe as soloist. I can’t really decide whether this concerto or no. 4 is my favourite – I think no. 4 may just have the edge. I was happy with the performance except I thought that the final movement was a little rushed.

After the interval came Tchaikovsky’s 4th symphony, with Peter Donohoe now conducting. I’m not very well placed to judge this performance, because I was sat in the quire, behind the orchestra and this distorted the sound considerably in this particular piece. With more players and some general rearrangement, the brass and percussion dominated to such an extent as to smother the wind and strings when they were playing. Let’s just put this down to the quirky acoustic of Bath Abbey, which (as a veteran of singing there) I know well. So before buying a ticket for the quire, check the programme! I’ve found it fine acoustically for early music, a few months ago V-W’s Tallis Fantasia sounded lovely, but Beethoven’s is perhaps the latest full orchestra for which it will work.

LP to CD

We are facing up to the fact that we really ought to digitise our collection of LPs (200-300 discs), to go ultimately on to CD. Should we invest in a turntable which can link up directly to a PC, or route the sound via our existing hifi (which is reasonable quality Arcam – nearly wrote IRCAM!)? As the collection isn’t huge and we aren’t hifi freaks we don’t want a huge outlay on equipment to do this.
Comments which consist of an advert for the commenter’s product won’t be published.

a Prom and a request

My husband and daughter went to Prom 73 – Franz Welser-Möst conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Haydn’s Symphony no. 98 and Schubert’s Great C major symphony. They enjoyed themselves, though both they and I (who listened on radio) felt that the brass got a little over-enthusiastic on occasion. Here are reviews from the Independent, Telegraph, Times and Guardian.

This has no relevance to music, but I’m just popping a link to an online sponsorship form for a walk we’re doing in a few days time in aid of a local charity .

A College mailing list

My Cambridge college, Corpus, is proposing to set up a mailing list for its old members who were involved in the Chapel choir or music society. If you’re on it, you’ll get a newsletter and invitations to reunions of the group. Cost £25 a year, which doesn’t seem to include any donation to the funds of the choir or music society, but is purely to cover the costs of running the scheme.

I have sounded out some contemporaries of mine, but some who would otherwise have joined are put off by the cost. This is going to reduce the usefulness to others, because a reunion to which few are invited will be less appealing. Do other colleges run this sort of scheme and what do they charge? I have joined the Friends of Merton College choir in Oxford, but that is specifically to raise money for the choir, although there are some perks as a ‘thank you’ to members.

Jingling Johnny at Prom 62

I took my daughter to the Proms to hear Mariss Jansons conduct the Royal Conertgebouw Orchestra in two symphonies: Haydn’s no. 100, the ‘Military’ and Shostakovich’s 10th.

Both of these works have an in-your-face quality, with an occasional need for shrill, piercing woodwind, which the RCO delivered admirably. There was a theatrical element to the Haydn when some of the percussionists trooped off, Farewell Symphony-style, at the end of the second movement. I wondered whether their contracts allowed them to leave if they weren’t required in the rest of the work, but they reappeared at the very end, walking on stage in a line, with the player at the back waving a contraption which looked like a two-tier cake stand covered in bells and with a couple of tassels dangling from it. I gather that the official English name for this instrument is a ‘Jingling Johnny’.

The Turk inspired the Haydn symphony, but in the Shostakovich you can feel the menacing presence of a Georgian. This symphony is very much in favour and frequently performed, while the Leningrad seems to be taking a back seat at the moment. I heard no. 10 at the Proms three years ago, and while that performance was perfectly creditable, this one surpassed it, not least because of the variety of controlled tone from woodwind (especially in the long, rambling solo melodies Shostakovich loves to write) and brass. I think in particular of the final horn call in the solo movement, when I had to look to check that the player really hadn’t moved further away than before, it sounded so distant.

My daughter commented on how restrained Jansson’s gestures were ‘although for a conductor he’s quite young’ (he’s 66).

Encores were Sibelius (that standard encore piece, the Valse Triste) and more Shostakovich. Now where’s the Proms pond in the arena this year?

Reviews (mostly very good) from the Guardian, Independent, Times and Telegraph. Also this, mostly about the Haydn, from the BBC Proms blog.

the cathedral with the campanile

I believe that Chichester Cathedral is the only Church of England Cathedral in England with a detached bell-tower.* It’s not in the best of shape, being largely covered in netting at the moment. Perhaps it’s awaiting the attention of the Cathedral’s surveyor of a few years ago, Donald Buttress (could there be a better name?).

I spent two days at the end of the Cathedral Chamber Choir’s week there, getting up at 5 a.m. in order to make the Saturday morning rehearsal. I needed every minute because there was quite a bit of new music for me. Firstly a piece from my wishlist, Parry’s ‘Great’ service. This was only published in the 1980’s which may explain its gradual entry into the repertoire. Actually now I’ve sung it I rather wonder why I was so desperate to do so, but at least I have performed it now. The anthem was also one I’d never sung before, although I heard it earlier this year, Bach’s O Jesu Christ, meins Leben Licht.

On Sunday we paired the Vierne Messe Solennelle with an Ave Verum by Dupré, which was also new to me. It felt like a piece for women’s voices which had been rewritten for four-part choir. At Matins and Evensong we sang a recently-written set of Responses by our conductor, Matthew O’Donovan. Chichester does not patronise visiting choirs by cutting down on the full psalms for the day, so we had plenty of psalmody on Saturday. Sunday evensong posed the greatest challenge; we had booked an organist for the Sunday services but during lunchtime he had an accident and wasn’t able to play evensong. We were able to present an unchanged programme, with our conductor now playing the organ and one of our other conductors conducting rather than singing. The anthem was Elgar’s Great is the Lord, which I tend to confuse with Give unto the Lord and which I was singing for the first time, paired with Howells’ ‘Westminster’ canticles. Emergency re-arrangement of this kind is surely one of the greatest tests of a choir!

We stayed at the University of Chichester’s Bishop Otter College campus. It was an all too brief visit, and not as social as usual – I found myself eating alone more than I’d have liked. Not only are shared meals more fun, but this is also when I get a feel for where people would like to go on future visits, which I’m now planning.

*This is no longer true – it has been pointed out to me that St Edmundsbury has a brand new separate bell-tower, and Chester has had one since the 1970’s. On a recent visit to Salisbury I learned that there used to be a bell-tower there too.