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.

Saturday, 16th March 2024, Blackheath Halls.

Ralph Vaughan Williams – Five Mystical Songs

Francis Poulenc – Piano Concerto in C# minor / Stabat Mater

Conductor: Dan Ludford-Thomas

Piano: Nico de Villiers

Forest Philharmonic Orchestra

Baritone: Daniel Tate

Soprano: Helen Meyerhoff

Piano: Cliodna Shanahan

This term’s major work for Lewisham Choral Society was Poulenc’s Stabat Mater, something I appear to have performed almost exactly 13 years ago with the London Philharmonic. I don’t remember that earlier performance, although I do recall the rehearsals, during which a fellow alto – Stephanie – and I doodled on our scores and wrote comments on how awful the text was.

However, unless Poulenc wrote two Stabat Mater‘s this wasn’t the same work. I don’t have the score from when I was in the LPC so can’t be absolutely sure, but a quick peek at the post from back then has a quote from a review that mentions a Pavan, which wasn’t in this score. The review refers to the piece as having something “sensually Caravaggian about its pained chromaticism…“

Pained is certainly a word one could use.

The other work was Five Mystical Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams, words by George Herbert.

Song 1 is Easter, and contains the phrase “The cross taught all wood to resound his name who bore the same/His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key is best to celebrate the most high day.” Apart from the ridiculous Tolkienian notion that trees communicate with each other even after they’ve been felled and fashioned into an instrument of torture, comparing the tuning of a lute’s strings to stretching a human being’s sinews to tearing point is just horrible.

Song 2 is the quaintly titled I got me flowers. I prefer Blur’s version.

Song 3, Love bade me welcome, is a dinner invitation. I’d put good money on the fact that no-one has ever invited anyone to dinner with the words “You must sit down […] and taste my meat”.

The choir stay silent during Song 4, The Call. Following on from Song 3, this call should be to the police.

Song 5 is one song – Let all the world in every corner sing – to the tune of another (and not one that I’ve heard before). However, after the other 3 it’s quite cleansing. The altos end on a high D, surpassed only by the E in Easter.

The final rehearsal is in situ with the orchestra. The RVW was as expected: I hadn’t practised anywhere near enough, and it showed. The Poulenc was slightly better, but I finally decided to mark off several bars where – even with considerably more practise – I still couldn’t pitch the notes. Thankfully, there were more than enough altos who knew what they were doing but miming isn’t what I plan to do during a concert. Where I was confident, I sang up. It was a pleasant surprise to end the rehearsal feeling slightly better disposed to Frankie Plank and his pained chromaticism.

For the concert, the Five Mystical Songs passed without incident, bar my forgetting – at different times – both the tune and the words. By contrast, both Daniel, the baritone soloist, and Cliodna, the pianist, were superb. There was a palpable atmosphere in the Hall at the end of Song 4, a collective breath that was held until the Antiphon. I found the D at the end and was glad it was over.

Dan seemed to thoroughly enjoy conducting Poulenc’s Piano Concerto – disjointed and weird as it was -and the orchestra responded to his enthusiasm. There’d been a huge round of applause from the choir when Nico arrived during our rehearsal, and another for his virtuoso performance on the piano. It’s not the main instrument, as in some other concertos, and each section of the orchestra gets their chance to shine. I’d not heard this work before, and probably won’t again.

Stabat Mater went better than I thought it would. At the rehearsal on Wednesday, Dan – referring to the Forest Philharmonic – said “they can play it”. Well, they can – and they did – with an enthusiasm unmatched by mine. Helen sounded wonderful – especially considering she was recovering from a bad cold.

Listening to practice tracks and recordings of the work was probably counter-productive as so much of it sounds wrong. However, the silent four (perhaps five) bars aside, I felt confident, but was still relieved when I managed to pitch the last note correctly. We’ll have to wait until Monday to find out what Dan thought.

Saturday, 11th November 2023, Great Hall, Goldsmiths College.

I missed three things in the run-up to this concert: the Staff Awards on the Friday, where the choir performed in a room largely full of drunk people; the Frankie Boyle gig at the Broadway Theatre in Catford; the final rehearsal on the Saturday morning. All thanks to an ENT consultant who, frankly, should have known better than to bring their virus to a crowded office with no access to fresh air. So, having gone through several hours of self-imposed voice rest, I turned up at 7 with no idea where I was going to stand (hopefully, by one of the basses) or if any last-minute instructions had been given by Dan.

There were no additional notes, but there were two seats reserved for me. I suspect that one of the altos had realised I wasn’t there but would be later on, so saved one independently of the one requested by the seating organiser. Not everyone can always attend the morning rehearsal, so this is quite common.

To be honest, my voice still wasn’t fully recovered, but I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to sing this piece for what must have been the sixth time. This time, though, it was different. This time I knew both Osanna‘s.

The hall was packed – there were even people in the gallery – and they seemed to approve (not of my very minor accomplishment) of the whole performance.

Saturday, 17th November 2018, Great Hall, Goldsmiths College.

Antonin Dvorák: Te Deum, op. 103
Sonatina for piano and flute, op.100
Mass in D, op.86

Conductor: Dan Ludford-Thomas
Organ and Piano: Martyn Noble
Flute: Jennifer Stinton

I’ve only just realised that I’ve sung the Te Deum before. That’s how much I enjoyed it.

The seating arrangements at Goldsmiths were changed for health and safety reasons, so we were closer to the audience than before, which turned out to be slightly disconcerting.

The flautist, Jennifer, was excellent. Both she and Martyn seemed not at all bothered by the unexpected noise of fireworks being set off during their sonatina.

I liked the Mass as a whole. Unfortunately, my personal performance was under par, despite a good rehearsal.

Thursday, 14 June 2018, 3 Abbey Road, St. John’s Wood, London NW8 9AY 

The last time I was at Abbey Road was on 18 June 2011, in the famous Studio 1, one of many singers taking part in the recording of The Peacemakers by Karl Jenkins. There was scaffolding covering the front of the building, which had been Grade II listed about 16 months earlier, but this didn’t stop the hundreds of fans who gathered on the pavement outside to take photos of the wall, the street sign, themselves and others crossing that crossing, which must irritate any driver – statistically, there must be some – who have no idea of its significance.

Seven years later, the scaffolding was gone, but the fans (of all ages, and from all over) were still there. What was missing was the road surface, including the also Grade II listed zebra crossing. There can’t ever be a good time to replace this particular piece of road – even if it’s not in its original location – which is why it was back before sunset, people marching in single file from one side to the other, camera flashes increasingly bright against the darkening sky.

Those who were available for the whole day had mustered at St John’s Wood United Synagogue before going to the studios to record various voice parts, as well as meet some of the celebrities who are also involved in the project. I’d planned to take the day off but a problem at work on Tuesday made that difficult, so I got there at about 4.30pm – all the photos had been done, all the celebrities had gone, but at least I’d not missed the alto recording.

Recording is an odd process. Songs are broken into phrases, and you sing the same few bars over and over until whoever’s in charge – Jon Cohen, for this recording – is happy. Sometimes, on the 4th or 5th take, you’ve forgotten what it is they originally asked for. How long the process takes seems to depend on which part is being recorded – with more people in the studio, you get more disagreements – and it was lucky for me, I think, that they recorded the tenors and basses first, and left the altos and sopranos until later.

Afterwards, there was time to sit in the café, or the garden, and chat, or walk back and forth over the newly-laid crossing, and mainly marvel at how much we – as a choir – have done since 2012. Since the 2015 campaign, there are a few people who are always involved when it comes to organising. Over time, they’ve formed relationships with people who know people who know people, and they’ve had the drive and the enthusiasm to get things done. It’s a thankless task, largely because the people who haven’t been involved in the organising are so busy enjoying themselves on the day that they forget all the hard work that goes into making things happen. Either that, or they’re too busy complaining about the venue or the catering to remember that it takes effort to arrange even the smallest gigs.

None of which should detract from the fact that it was a real privilege to be in such an historic building – let’s hope that the rumours of it being sold for flats aren’t true.