Way haul away to the Barbican

As rehearsal for our sea-themed concert started last Friday, one of the other sopranos sidled up to me, clutching her folder with a worried expression.
“How many pieces have you got?” she hissed.
I looked in my folder, just to recount one more time. “Five,” I murmured back.
She nodded, relieved, and I patted her shoulder reassuringly. This was the lowest number of pieces we’ve done at a concert in quite some time, as we normally like to challenge ourselves with at least 15 pieces, all in different styles. So we were all fighting the insecurity that our lightweight music folders were instilling. If we aren’t risking a hernia, it just doesn’t feel like an Oriana concert.

Luckily, what we lacked in sheer numbers of pieces, we made up for in complexity. The Bruckner is superb but it’s not easy to sing well, and we were all desperate to do it justice. The Willcocks was tricky in many places, and the Bingham (I just can’t hide my feelings here) is the stuff that pelagic nightmares are made of. And we were rehearsing with an excellent but entirely new brass, wind and percussion section, so precious rehearsal minutes trickled by while we tried to get used to each other’s sound.

So come the concert we were once again in the throes of panic, but as always we rose to the challenge and pulled off a passable performance. The Bingham was a little seat-of-the-pants, but falling back on an old Oriana stalwart trick, we plastered grins on our faces, picked any note at random, and sang it out confidently. The resulting dissonant clashes may or may not have been as written, but at least we sang something, and to be honest I think that’s more than the piece deserved. (Sorry Bingham. It might grow on me. Eventually.) And once it was over we got to reward ourselves with the Wreck of the Hesperus, which was loads of fun.

Even the stress of the Bingham paled into insignificance next to the tension at the interval, when we discovered that our changing room at the back of the balcony was locked, with all the second half music inside. What were the chances we could sing the Bruckner Mass from memory? We were hastily comparing notes (“Yes, it definitely starts with Kyrie …. something …..”) when the church verger calmly removed her shoes, scaled the walls of the church, abseiled from the roof, crashed through the changing room window, and blew the door with some plastic explosive.* She is clearly a true Bruckner fan. The second half was saved.

So we’re now into rehearsing for our final concert of the season – Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius at the Barbican on June 22nd. Rehearsals have been going really well, and it is going to be a stunner of a concert. But just when we were being lulled into a false sense of security, David-the-Conductor was struck by a vision at Wednesday’s rehearsal. Part of the score is written for double choir, but due to the practical difficulties of getting a large choir to change formation on stage during a performance, it’s never really performed as a double choir. Well, as all our stalwart fans know, the Oriana laughs in the face of practical difficulty. Let’s face it, we began one concert with children lying in piles in front of us pretending to be dead, so do you really think a simple thing like shuffling about the stage is going to thwart us?

Unfortunately we don’t have a completely unblemished track record when it comes to moving while singing. Anyone that came to our Christmas concert will remember our efforts to process into the church while singing. The plan was to enter in formation, and surround the audience with the sops on one side, the altos on the other, and the men at the front. Or the back. Or something. We actually ended up with the sopranos in the middle of the bass section, which was quite a feat given that there are about five times more sopranos, and I didn’t see the tenors at all so I think they might have accidentally processed out of the church and into Costa Coffee next door. Let’s just say it wasn’t a complete success, so there is a certain level of nervousness about trying to manage another complicated manoeuvre with the whole Barbican watching. But I have every confidence. If we made it all the way to the end of the Bingham without stopping, we can accomplish anything.

*There may be an element of poetic license in this description.

Avast ye, concert lubbers!

According to good old Wikipedia, Percy Grainger’s comment on his first ever sexual encounter with a woman was "I thought I was about to die; If I remember correctly, I only experienced fear of death. I don't think that any joy entered into it". Ouch, poor lady.

Oddly enough, though, that sums up exactly how I felt while rehearsing Grainger’s piece “We Have Fed Our Sea For A Thousand Years”. There’s usually at least one piece I can’t stand in every concert, and this time Grainger has drawn the short straw, much as I enjoy some of his other music. “We have fed our sea…” is unabashedly nationalistic - the kind of piece that makes me feel like I should be wearing union jack knickers and voting BNP. Oh well, it’s on the programme for our concert next week, so I’ll just have to grit my teeth and get through it somehow. Lie back and think of England, as it were.

Luckily, I’m very excited about all the other pieces on the programme, so I’m really looking forward to singing our hearts out in Greenwich next week. I’ve already banged on about how much I love the Bruckner, so I won’t repeat myself (but it IS really really great!) Also on the programme is Hamish McCunn’s setting of the Longfellow poem “The Wreck of the Hesperus”, which is loads of fun. Legend has it that Longfellow was due to sail on the Lexington on its fatal voyage, but missed the departure because he was discussing the poem with his publisher. Oooh, spooky. And according to Wikipedia, “the wreck of the Hesperus” is a colloquial term for “dishevelled in appearance”. Not a term I have ever heard or used, personally, but let’s see how often I can get it in to the rest of the blog.

MacCunn seems primarily famous for having forced Hubert Parry to admit publicly that his personal life was falling apart, after taking umbrage at not being invited over for a visit. I assume the revelation went something like this:

MacCunn: Och, you haven’t invited me over for a wee dram
Parry: I’m sorry, my life resembles the wreck of the Hesperus right now
MacCunn: ah ya wee scamp!
David-the-Conductor: Stop pretending you can do a Scottish accent, Bloggiana

Also on the programme is Judith Bingham’s Salt in the Blood. It is my considered opinion that Bingham hates female choristers. Salt in the Blood is definitely a piece for the men, who get to sing jolly hornpipes while the women have to waft boringly about, being wind and waves and pelagic storm petrels, whatever they are. The exciting part is going to be trying to find our entry notes. At one point the altos are having to pitch their entry from a glissando augmented fourth whistle in the soprano part, which could be exciting. We had our first attempt at a full run-through last night, and – yes - it resembled the wreck of the Hesperus. Basically, the piece will go really well as long as David-the-Pianist comes to the concert and plays our parts along with us. If we’re on our own, we could well be heading fast for the reef of Norman’s Woe. Keep your fingers crossed for us!