Berberis' World

Thursday, 13th April 2023, Royal Festival Hall.

Nearly a decade since last singing it with Lewisham Choral Society, we were joined for this performance of Verdi’s Requiem the Hackney Singers. The Festival Hall is one of my favourite venues, and this evening it was packed. There were more people in the audience than for probably any other concert I’ve been part of.

There may be very little else for me to say about this work. If the different shade of yellow highlighter is anything to go by, there were some minor changes this time round: all Altos join the Tenors for the 2 bars immediately after Figures 9 and 94; Choir 1 and 2 join forces from 7 bars after Fig. 78 to Fig. 79. Any excuse to sing more Verdi is fine with me.

The programme has some interesting Guiseppe gossip: Wagner – perhaps following the old adage of “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”, or because his opinion was thought irrelevant – declined to say what he thought about the Requiem, whilst both Brahms and George Bernard Shaw respectively declared it the work of a “genius”, and an “imperishable monument”: their agreement about at least one requiem mass in all probability being of absolutely no note whatsoever.

Tuesday 9 April 2024, The Adelphi Theatre, Strand.

This was an Adam Blanshay Production in collaboration with NHS Charities Together to raise funds “for 230 charities up and down the country”. There are too many people to credit, so I won’t try.

Earplugs.

Earplugs are essential if you are performing with anyone playing instruments that are plugged in. I fear that I was out of tune for far more of this concert than I had hoped. We’d been given sheet music for the songs we were joining in with, but all the note-bashing on the Tuesday evenings leading up to the gig was for nought as cuts were made on the day, far too late to actually memorise anything different.

However, no-one goes onto the stage at the Adelphi trying to conceal bits of A4 behind the singer in the row in front, so we all just got on with it as best we could (some much better than others).

The songs were ‘500 Miles’ (not the Proclaimers version, which would have been much easier), ‘From Now On’ (from ‘The Greatest Showman’, which I saw on the small screen), and ‘You Will Be Found’ (from ‘Dear Evan Hansen’, with which I was previously unfamiliar, but which has a phenomenal drum accompaniment).

This is being written nearly two and half years after the event. I can find 9 photos from this evening, none of which convey anything much except that the predominant set colour was NHS blue.