Berberis' World

Saturday, 27th March 2017, Royal Festival Hall, London.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Mass in B Minor, BWV232

Soprano: Elin Manahan Thomas
Soprano: Helen Meyerhoff
Alto: Roderick Morris
Tenor: David de Winter
Bass: Philip Tebb

Hackney Singers
London Mozart Players

Harpsichord + Organ continuo: James Orford
Organ continuo: Andrew Storey

Conductor: Dan Ludford-Thomas

The B Minor Mass at the Festival Hall. What’s not to like? Well, very little. I’ve written at length about this largely glorious piece – the Credo still grates, but is more than compensated for by everything else. I’d’ve preferred a front row seat (I was in row 3 of the choir stalls), and my enthusiasm got the better of me on a couple of occasions but, this aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this concert.

Saturday, 12th November 2016, Great Hall, Goldsmiths College.

Schubert: Offertorium, Intende Voci, D963
Mozart: Piano Concerto No 21 in C, K467
Schubert: Mass in E Flat, D950

Soprano: Helen Meyerhoff
Alto: Susan Legg
Tenor: Mark Chaundy
Bass: Philip Tebb

Conductor: Dan Ludford-Thomas
Piano: Nico De Villiers
Forest Philharmonic Orchestra

According to a number of the composer’s fansites, Intende Voci is amongst Schubert’s less well known of his religious songs. I have a non-Schubertian ear, so can only guess at why this might be: is it too difficult? is it not difficult enough? too long? too short? too boring? (Oops…what a giveaway. Sorry, Franz.)

I found the Mass in E flat a bit of a curate’s egg: it wasn’t until the andante con moto at bar 145 in the Gloria that it started to appeal. It was slow and dramatic and, although a quartet sang the Miserere, the remainder – especially bars 221-224 – were more than adequate compensation. The Quoniam is over fairly (and thankfully) quickly, and the Cum sancto spiritu is very reminiscent of Bach. We interrupt the soloists every now and again during the Et incarnatus est, and they repay the gesture in the Benedictus. The Osanna gets its customary second airing after this.

By far my favourite section is the Agnus Dei. This has a lovely few (and I do mean few) bars where the altos are not completely drowned out by the brass section. Towards the end, after the Dona nobis pacem, there’s an all-too-brief reprise of the Agnus Dei but, again, the altos are up against the brass and, again, we lose.

All that said, he orchestra were very good, the soloists were on top form, Nico was sparkling in the Mozart, and Dan was as energetic and expressive as usual. However, for the few bars that I really enjoyed, I’d not rush to perform either piece again.

Saturday, 19 March 2016, Fairfield Halls, Croydon.

The last time I sung Elijah was in 2009, under the barely-moving baton of the formidable – but sadly now the late – Kurt Masur.

This time, it was under the animated baton of the equally formidable – and happily still with us – Dan Ludford-Thomas, and it was just as enjoyable to sing second time round.

The only niggle was… well, there were two niggles. Niggle one was that Dan decided we would sing it in English, not German. From the opening aliterative “Hilf, Herr!”, which can have you hyperventilating if you’re not careful, through the glorious “Aber der Herr sieht es nicht”, with its beautiful descending strings as the sopranos sing “…an vielen, vielen Tausenden…”, and the glorious, if spittle-fuelled, “Da kam ein feuriger Wagen, mit feurigen, feurigen Rosen” the English text doesn’t quite have the gutteral quality necessary for such a completely bonkers piece. That said, the descending strings are still beautiful, and you can have just as much fun with fiery, fiery horses. And I could find nothing in the preface of my Novello score that says you have to drench the front three rows with spittle.

Niggle two was the omission of No. 40. Well, 40 and 41, but 41 is a quartet so leaving it out made no difference to the choir. But No. 40 has some more gorgeous strings: have a look at the middle system on page 192 of the Novello edition – the cellos and double basses get that dotted rhythm for just three bars, but what a glorious three bars they are! Overall, it’s an uplifting sing and I didn’t understand why it was left out.

I could add a third niggle – Croydon – but I was able to drive there and, as you can park more or less underneath Fairfield Halls, it’s a very small one. The venue is actually very nice – big dressing room, a café for coffee, eateries a short walk away – with good staging and excellent sightlines. LCS numbers were bolstered by the Derbyshire Singers, and a good sound was made by all.

Saturday, 14th November 2015, Goldsmith’s College.

“On the evening of 13 November 2015, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks occurred in Paris, the capital of France, and its northern suburb, Saint-Denis. Beginning at 21:20 CET, three suicide bombers struck near the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, followed by suicide bombings and mass shootings at cafés, restaurants, and a concert hall in Paris. The attackers killed 130 people, including 89 at the Bataclan theatre, where they took hostages before engaging in a stand-off with police. There were 368 people who were wounded, 80-99 seriously so. Seven of the attackers also died, while authorities continued to search for accomplices. The attacks were the deadliest on France since World War II, and the deadliest in the European Union since the Madrid train bombings in 2004. France had been on high alert since the January 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 17 people, including civilians and police officers.” (Taken from Wikipedia, Sunday 27th December.)

This left all of us shocked, angry, and saddened. The mood was subdued at rehearsal and it was decided to dedicate the concert to those killed, for the little good it would do.

But what do you do? Send money, I suppose, and clothes. Maybe food. Moral support. Once you’ve done this, all that is really left is to be bloody thankful that it wasn’t you or your loved ones. Because, for most of us, the fact that there are people in the world who think it’s acceptable to kill anyone who doesn’t agree with them is as incomprehensible as it is terrifying.

Sadly, there always have been and there always will be those who are so ignorant, so gullible, or so bitter and twisted, that wholesale slaughter of dis- or un-believers is not only acceptable but justified by the religious tract to which they slavishly adhere.

And it is religion at the heart of all of this. Evangelicals of all stripes pick and choose what they like from their chosen book, but endorsements for the most extreme behaviour lurks in the pages of all of them. Some of the most ardent churchgoers I’ve known were guilty of half a dozen of the so-called crimes for which the Christian Bible mandates the death penalty.

Once it was sticks and stones. Now it’s Semtex, suicide bombers, high velocity rifles, planes into buildings, and more, all coordinated through social media. Popular newspapers tell us that we need to be suspicious of anyone who’s different. Those in the silent majority (and I don’t mean frothing-at-the-mouth right/left wing idiots who get more than enough air time/column inches) need to remind themselves and educate the next generation that “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” leaves the world toothless and blind.

As for the concert, it went well. The audience was large, and generous with their applause. For a couple of hours, in a hall in New Cross – far from the carnage in Paris – a small group of people cooperated with a single purpose, and produced something beautiful.

Saturday, 4th July 2015, Cadogan Hall, London.

John Joubert: O Lorde, the maker of al thing
Eric Whitacre: Five Hebrew Love Songs
Mozart: Sonata in A for piano and violin
Carl Orff: Carmina Burana

Soprano: Louise Kemény
Countertenor: Tim Travers-Brown
Baritone: Alex Ashworth
Percussion Leader: Matthew Turner
Violin: Paula Muldoon
Pianos: Nico de Villers, Jakob Fichert

Sydenham High School Voices
Director: Caroline Lenton-Ward

Conductor: Dan Ludford-Ward

The Joubert was new to me. It came first out of 235 entries in the 1952 Novello Anthem Competition, and was described at the time as a ‘fine piece, dignified and ecclesiastical in style’. I thought it was fine until the ‘in heav’n and yearth’, when you really couldn’t hear anything except the sopranos.

The NAC runner up (My soul there is a country by John Graves) was described as ‘charming and effective […] well-suited for the averagely good choir and organ’. However, its success seems to have been eclipsed by a piece of the same name by the much more famous Charles Hubert Parry. Some of the entries were criticised as being too modern – ‘modulating too freely and unconvincingly’ – but, according to some, this may have been a result of Novello tending towards a more conservative style in an attempt to sell more music scores. I mention this only because goodness only knows what the judges – W. H. Harris and E. Thirman – would have made of some of the pieces by Rutter, McDowell, or Patterson, that we’ve performed recently.

Anything by Eric Whitacre is always welcome. The Five Hebrew Love Songs were no exception.

I’ve sung Carmina Burana several times, either extracts or the whole thing. In November 2005 with the LCS, in November 2009 and October 2010 with the LPC, and again with the Really Big Chorus. There are a few things I expect from a performance: the timpani should sound like thunder, the tenor should completely ham it up, soprano should be able to hit that stratospherically high D, and my voice should last to the end. To date, I’ve not been disappointed.