The blog wasn’t here on time last week due to adverse weather conditions. Which is actually true as I was planning to write it on Saturday, but was thwarted by almost getting snowed in at Louise-the-Soprano’s wedding. An intrepid band of Orianans had braved the cold and the unknown horrors of the world outside the M25 in order to sing some choir classics at the ceremony. But the snow caused some problems as the bridal car couldn’t get up the hill, and so there was an uneasy half an hour of waiting in choir formation in the church until Louise finally trudged in on foot, wearing a fetching wedding-dress-and-welly combo. It was a lovely wedding though, and as a bonus we had the spectacle of men in morning suits digging cars out from under a good foot of snow – and many thanks to the posh-frocked lady in heels and fascinator who obligingly gave our car a push up the hill.
Wedding high-jinks weren’t the only Oriana occasion this week, though, as it was our Christmas concert last Thursday and it was fab. We were unusually well-prepared this time – we’d sung through everything on the programme AT LEAST once, and we didn’t have to use the interval as extra rehearsal time, so it was most relaxing for a Christmas concert. The Audience Challenge went smoothly, although everyone at the front was quite clearly wishing they’d sat further away from us when David-the-Conductor explained they were going to have to hold the tune by themselves while we harmonised around them. But we clearly attract a better class of audience, and they made it through to the end no matter what we threw at them. Or at any rate, they all sang the last note in a confident manner! The Poulenc Christmas Motets were magical and an absolutely joy to sing. But my highlight of the concert was Giles Swayne’s Starlight, which is a very simple piece for unison voices and piano accompaniment, written in the 1980s while Swayne was busy paring down his sound. It’s the most Christmassy song I’ve ever heard, and David-the-Conductor bangs it out on the piano with an infectious enthusiasm. Every year I cross my fingers and fervently pray we get to sing it, but last year we had a medieval-themed Christmas concert so it wasn’t on the programme, to my despair. I very nearly forged a copy of it arranged for sackbutt and lute in the hopes that I could fool David-the-Conductor into including it as an original by Henry VIII, but Giles Swayne falls into the “alive and therefore able to sue me” category of composers, so I forebore. Although given that Private Eye described him as “amiably bonkers” he may have enjoyed the intrigue. Anyway I welcomed “Starlight” back by bopping and grinning inanely all the way through, which I think is perfectly acceptable in a Christmas concert, and we finished with a rollicking Hark the Herald Angels which is always how I know that Christmas is here. So I’m feeling all Christmassy and goodwill-to-all-men-y now, so have a fantastic Christmas, and the blog will be back rather more intermittently in the new year so hope you’ll keep reading then.
Tuesday 21 December 2010
Saturday 4 December 2010
Christmassy Poulenc
Calling all local hospitals, last week’s alert to be on stand-by during our concert is cancelled. I repeat, hospitals, stand down!
After this week’s rehearsal I am now confident that we won’t require their aid after all during Angels from the Realms of Glory. David-the-Conductor has made some changes to his arrangement to simplify it for us, and as we get more familiar with the trickier harmonies and cross rhythms they’re really starting to fall into place. So carnage is unlikely to rule our performance of this piece, although it might well be worth still having a St John’s Ambulance stand, just in case. But that’s an impressive improvement in just one week, isn’t it? And we’ve still got two weeks to go until the concert. If we continue the same rate of improvement maybe we’ll end up being able to heal the sick ourselves.
We actually had an extremely successful rehearsal this week despite sub-zero temperatures in the church which acts as our back-up rehearsal venue. Even this provided a good opportunity to get to know new people in the choir, as all 60 of us tried to crowd onto the 6-by-4-foot heating grate at half time. Survival of the fittest and judicious use of elbows reined. Once rehearsal resumed we raced through lots of music, targeting improvements until it all started to sound fantastic. The Poulenc Christmas Motets were especially beautiful. Poulenc of course was one of Les Six, a group of composers pulled together by Cocteau for little reason other than that he thought it would be a great marketing ploy and they’d make loads of dosh. Kind of like a chic 1920s Simon Cowell. Poulenc happened to be standing in front of Honegger in the baguette queue at the local Carre-Four when Cocteau was passing, and a phenomenon was born. The group unsurprisingly fell apart almost before it was formed, citing “musical differences”, and they all went off to have solo careers of varying success. Poulenc managed to successfully shake off his siX-Factor associations and underwent a bit of a religious conversion, becoming a composer of some of the most glorious sacred music ever written. The Christmas Motets are up there with the best, and are the cherry on top of a fantastic Christmas programme. I urge you to come to this year’s concert, it’s going to be a stunner.
After this week’s rehearsal I am now confident that we won’t require their aid after all during Angels from the Realms of Glory. David-the-Conductor has made some changes to his arrangement to simplify it for us, and as we get more familiar with the trickier harmonies and cross rhythms they’re really starting to fall into place. So carnage is unlikely to rule our performance of this piece, although it might well be worth still having a St John’s Ambulance stand, just in case. But that’s an impressive improvement in just one week, isn’t it? And we’ve still got two weeks to go until the concert. If we continue the same rate of improvement maybe we’ll end up being able to heal the sick ourselves.
We actually had an extremely successful rehearsal this week despite sub-zero temperatures in the church which acts as our back-up rehearsal venue. Even this provided a good opportunity to get to know new people in the choir, as all 60 of us tried to crowd onto the 6-by-4-foot heating grate at half time. Survival of the fittest and judicious use of elbows reined. Once rehearsal resumed we raced through lots of music, targeting improvements until it all started to sound fantastic. The Poulenc Christmas Motets were especially beautiful. Poulenc of course was one of Les Six, a group of composers pulled together by Cocteau for little reason other than that he thought it would be a great marketing ploy and they’d make loads of dosh. Kind of like a chic 1920s Simon Cowell. Poulenc happened to be standing in front of Honegger in the baguette queue at the local Carre-Four when Cocteau was passing, and a phenomenon was born. The group unsurprisingly fell apart almost before it was formed, citing “musical differences”, and they all went off to have solo careers of varying success. Poulenc managed to successfully shake off his siX-Factor associations and underwent a bit of a religious conversion, becoming a composer of some of the most glorious sacred music ever written. The Christmas Motets are up there with the best, and are the cherry on top of a fantastic Christmas programme. I urge you to come to this year’s concert, it’s going to be a stunner.
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