Cardiff
Polyphonic Choir
(click
here for the web page and
here for our Facebook page)
The main news, for me, was that I was asked to be manager of the
choir this February. Very exciting and a great honour as my predecessors have been
fantastic people. I will certainly not live up to their abilities.
Our first concert this year was a repeat of the Rachmaninov
Vespers at St Martin-in-the-fields in February. This went very well,
with an agent listening, who thought we were good. The seating was a
bit last minute, due to a concert before ours, so the first tenors
ended up hidden by the seconds. Interesting that most of our first
tenors are short; most seconds quite tall.
 We
sang a programme, which, in the second half, consisted of the
Brahms Requiem on April 20 at the Doris Stoutzker Hall at the Royal
Welsh College of Music and Drama (left). It seemed to go very well.
This was the first time we had been in the new venue. I had
previously been to three concerts there and found the acoustic quite
'hard' for singers, but lovely for the brass that we saw in the
second concert. The acoustic seemed fine for our, larger choir.
It was nice to have a professional venue, where they understood the need for space and things like changing rooms.
So many places we sing have a small vestry where everyone mucks in
and strips off in public view. Not a pretty sight in my case. In
some ways the hall resembles a chapel, with its main floor area and
upstairs gallery.
We have a summer concert on June 30, comprising some lighter
works, including Shakespeare sonnets, set to music by George Shearing. In the
autumn we will sing Frank Martin's Mass for double choir, said
to be 'rather tricky in places' by our choirmaster. That
will be in St German's a favourite haunt for us.
WNO Community Choir
Sadly I could not take part in a choir to join the WNO in the final part of
the 1812 overture in
April, though I did pass the audition.
Dorset Opera
Will not get to Dorset this year, as we are planning to cycle
to and through Brittany again about then.
Radyr Parish Music Group
 We started rehearsing in September, for Iolanthe,
which we performed in February half term. The
women were hippies of the 1960 variety and the lords were be
lords of the 1960 variety, i.e. much as lords were in the 19th
Century. I appeared as a butterfly-catching lord in plus twos, a
deerstalker and lots
of tweed. And a big net, of course (left). It seemed to go very
well; I remembered quite a lot of it from the last time we did it,
16 years ago!
We are now preparing a concert for May for the Radyr Festival.
Songs from the shows of various sorts. Tessa seems to have an
encyclopaedic knowledge of musical theatre.
Solo stuff
Still trying to sing the lovely English 19th-20th century
repertoire. Am having a bash at 'Are my team still ploughing?' by
Butterworth. Bloody miserable. The questioner is actually dead and
the guy answering is having it off with his ex-girlfriend. I ask
you! Curiously lovely music despite that. Much of this, dare I say
'impressionist' music is based on beautiful poems, with the music
added by equally well-known composers, Britten, Vaughan Williams and
so on.
|
