Last Night of the Season

After a long year we have finally arrived at the Last Night of the Season. Sadly we didn’t finish with Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem, but we did imbibe enough wine to make the last night of the Proms look like a nun’s day out. I had two glasses of prosecco at the break and giggled like a 5-year-old through the entire second half. It wasn’t my fault though, the altos were making me laugh. And the tenors. And basses.

We had lots to celebrate though, so the wine was totally appropriate. It’s been a season packed with concerts, two successful tours, a huge variety of music, and venues ranging from Abbey Road studios to the O2 arena. Along the way we’ve made new friends, discovered new music, fallen in love with some pieces (Martin Mass – superb!) and developed trenchant hatred for others (No 5 in Gardner’s A Burns Sequence - I can’t even say the title for the violent shuddering it induces, but it rhymes with “Oh Missel and I’ll Thumb to Ye”). What a great season, let’s hope next year will be even better!

As every minute of rehearsal time counts in Oriana, we spent this final rehearsal running through the music for the first concert of next season. This will be a repeat of a concert we did a year ago, themed on Shakespeare, so those of us who’ve been in the choir for a while already know the music pretty well. I was delighted to have another go at the Mantyjarvi “Lullaby”, which I just love, and also Vaughan Williams’ Three Shakespeare Songs. The low point was a revisitation of the composer I love to hate – yes, good old Gardner again! I’m only just getting over the horror of A Burns Sequence, but you’ll be delighted to know he wrote A Shakespeare Sequence as well. His Shakespeare songs are for female voice only, and as always with Gardner I really like some and can’t stand the others. We really struggled with O Mistress Mine during last year’s concert, and we made an absolute dogs breakfast of it again on Wednesday night. “That’ll need some work” said David-the-Conductor, with impressive understatement. I’ll happily give it some work, with a hatchet. The men rescued us by entertaining us with a lovely version of a Washburn song (sorry, I’ve forgotten which one, it was late and I was too busy giggling to take notes). And we finished with Appelbaum’s Witches Blues (meow!), a rousing chorus to send us off for the summer.

As there won’t be any choral activity now until September the blog is hereby suspended so it can go on virtual holiday to a cyber-beach. We’ll be back in the first week of September, so thanks for reading these past few months, and hope to see you in the autumn!