Seized by the throat
by berberis on Dec.29, 2010, under Choir, Concerts, LPC, Rehearsals
Wednesday, 29th December 2010, Barbican Hall.
For a concert venue – at least from the performer’s perspective – the Barbican Hall is tiny. With the majority of the 1900+ seats filled, putting 120 singers (members of both the London Philharmonic Choir and the Royal Choral Society) behind a large orchestra (the Royal Philharmonic), the place soon becomes almost uncomfortably hot. As we sat listening to the first 4 movements, I occasionally felt a waft of cool air coming from somewhere above me, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
I only managed to get to the rehearsal on time due to a chance meeting on the escalator at Moorgate, and was hot and bothered by the time I reached the dressing room. The Barbican Centre is perhaps the most magnificent example of why every single building that is erected these days is 99% glass. A thousand psychotic rabbits on crack could not construct anything quite so ridiculously dark and complicatedly un-navigable.
Once we’d worked out the seating arrangements (always a nightmare) and the RPO had tuned up, Christopher Warren-Green came on stage with 3 of the 4 soloists (the bass soloist was missing, having probably taken a wrong staircase and found himself in the Library vault or the boiler room) and proceeded to conduct like a man possessed. Even the soloists had difficulty keeping up with him. He wanted it louder! nastier! uglier! sharper! and I just sat there and looked at him as his hair grew wilder and his arms threatened to fall off.
He was also wildly effusive in his praise of the music – at about 3′ 23″ (timings may vary) into the 4th movement, he demanded that the orchestra quieten down so that the bassoon could be heard playing (I paraphrase here) ‘the most perfect piece of contrapuntal music ever written’. I didn’t care that he might well say the same about every piece he conducts… at that moment, in the face of such passion, I believed him utterly.
In the 2 hours or so thumb-twiddling time before the concert (we weren’t allowed on stage for the first half) I had a long conversation with a couple of choir members about the vagaries of life, the therapeutic nature of singing, the unrelenting pressure of work, and the nightmare of re-auditions; discussion of all but the latter made me feel better. However, I subsumed my fears, ate my ham salad and put on the required ‘long and black’ as well as some not-required make up.
When I auditioned for the LPC, one of my goals – if not my only goal at that point – was to sing Brahms’s Requiem at the Royal Festival Hall. Well, I’ve done that. Everything else has been a wonderful and extremely enjoyable bonus. Having said that, I would definitely miss singing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony every Xmas. For anyone who wants to know why it’s performed at this particular time of year, given that it;s not particularly seasonal, please go here. For anyone who wants to understand anything else about Beethoven, please go here.
However, I doubt that anything I could point you to on the internet would do justice to Maestro Warren-Green’s performance. I don’t think we’ve been directed with such ferocity since the closing moments of Dvorak’s ‘Stabat Mater’ in October. What was truly exhilarating was that Warren-Green sustained his fevered pitch for the entire symphony. It was certainly the quickest last movement I’ve ever sung. Indeed, as the final ‘GOOO-tter-FUNken’ was blasted off stage by an orchestra playing like the place was on fire, an alto in the front row fainted. Luckily, she fell backwards, and not into the horn section. To be honest, even if she had, I don’t think it would have stopped them.
