A glorious concert in St John's Smith Square

The blog’s a little bit late this week because I was didn’t want to jinx us before last night’s concert by being all optimistic about how amazing it was going to be. And it was indeed amazing! Unusually for us, we had a full orchestra – the Brandenburg Sinfonia – for this concert. We had our rehearsal with them yesterday afternoon and – the noble efforts of our rehearsal pianist notwithstanding – hearing the orchestral accompaniment really brought the music to life. In the Gardner Burns Sequence in particular, the orchestra’s wider variety of sounds meant we could really nail the different styles of each piece. Come the concert there were a couple of tentative “is it us now?” entries (where everyone does come in, but very quietly), but mostly we were confident and able to really perform the pieces. And I got through “Whistle and I’ll come to ye” without grimacing or spitting, which I think was a good effort. Although my nightmare of having to do it as a recurring encore in the future may be about to come true, as one of our singing teachers has already commended our performance of it. Eeeeeek.

The second half was devoted to the Puccini Messa di Gloria, which I have now come to love. Puccini wrote it at the age of 18 as his graduation piece from college, and he seems to have been a bit of a hellraiser in these teenage years. In my internet surfing about the piece I came across a marvellous story (which I really hope is true) that he played the organ in his local church throughout his teens, and he would sell the pipes for scrap metal and then hide his criminal activities by writing music that didn’t use those particular pipes! Isn’t that great? Using your talent for evil!

So looking at the Messa di Gloria as a piece written by a tearaway kid means you see it in a whole different light. It’s really glorious music, full of ideas and charm, and feels really Italian in the sense that it reminds you of that most quintessential Italian music, by which all other Italian music is judged – the music from The Godfather. (Look scandalized on behalf of the Italian masters if you like, but you know it’s true!) But the Messa seems to get more sparse as you go through. The Gloria is superb, at 17 minutes long and packed full of great music and contrasts. But then the movements get shorter right up to what should be the grand finale of the piece – the Agnus Dei – which comes in at a measly 2 minutes 20 seconds, and features mainly the soloists with only a couple of hasty entries from the choir. It was beautiful music, and when we’d finished singing it the audience started applauding enthusiastically, but we were all looking around our feet to see if a huge final choral movement had accidentally fallen out of our folders. I can’t help but think of a delinquent Puccini, the night before graduation, drinking away the ill-gotten gains of his latest pipe-selling spree, then waking up the next morning with a mega hangover shrieking “Mamma Mia, my deadline! And I haven’t written an Agnus Dei! Okay, quick, Miserere, ummm, Miserere again, oh god I forgot the choir, give them a Donna Nobis Pacem, okay done!” Still, pretty damn impressive for a schoolboy.