Berberis' World

Saturday, 15th December 2012, St Mary the Virgin, Lewisham.

Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on Christmas Carols

Carols for choir and audience: Make we joy now in the fest/A Boy is born in Bethlehem/Wither’s Rocking Hymn/O come, O come Emmanuel/Quem vidistis pastores dicite/Hodie Christus natus est/A great and mighty wonder/Infant holy, infant lowly/Ding dong! Merrily on high/Deck the hall/I wonder as I wander/There is a flower/See amid the winter’s snow/O come, all ye faithful

Piano: Nico de Villiers

Conductor: Dan Ludford-Thomas

Saturday, 17th November 2012, Great Hall, Goldsmiths College.

Mozart: Mass in C Minor
J S Bach: Jesu meine Freude
Beethoven: Choral Fantasia

Sopranos: Rachael Austen, Louise Kemeny, Helen Meyerhoff
Tenor: Thomas Herford
Bass: Philip Tebb

Forest Philharmonic Orchestra

Piano: Nico de Villiers

Conductor: Dan Ludford-Thomas

This was the first concert I did after I rejoined the Lewisham Choral Society. I’d briefly thought about going back after the debacle with the LPC but, whenever I did, I imagined returning would be a public admission of failure: I’d failed my re-audition with the LPC, and there were a number (albeit a small number) of people who would know that I’d failed. Also, I’d been part of a choir who’d failed to win a singing contest. I was going back because I just wasn’t very good.

I’d left LCS just before Stefan Reid departed. His successor – Dan – was one of the people who’d coached the hospital choir to our joint 2nd place at Llangollen, and it was Dan’s suggestion that I rejoin LCS. His enthusiasm was sufficient for me to think that it wasn’t out of pity, but a genuine belief that LCS was a very good choir and that I might enjoy it.

The bit of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia we performed sounded remarkably like an early draft of the last movement of his Symphony No. 9. Bach’s ‘Jesu meine Freude‘ is much nicer. It’s not Nänie – what is? – but I preferred it to the Beethoven. It was written for a 5-voice choir (!) and I don’t know whether or not this was the reason for omitting bars 123-146 and 277-405. It surely couldn’t have been because it’s difficult to sing, because there are longer semiquaver runs in the B minor Mass. Perhaps it was for time, or the overall feel of the piece.

The Mass in C is not as instant as the Requiem, although that’s probably because I’ve sung the latter half a dozen times, and it’s used in dozens of films, documentaries, adverts, etc. However much I prefer the Requiem, I’m not on the committee so the Mass in C is what we got. My score has yellow highlighter all over the first half, and then – apart from a few scribbles in pencil – there’s nothing. This probably reveals more about my frame of mind than anything to do with the music. A safe, if unmemorable, return.

Saturday, 30th June 2012, The Great Hall, University of Reading.

Schubert: Der Wanderer D493 – Gareth Rhys Davies (Baritone) and Edward Reeve (Piano)
Schubert: Fantasy in C Major D760 ‘Wanderer’
Solo Piano Improvisation: Edward Reeve
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D minor Op. 27 ‘Choral’

Soprano: Fiona Harrison
Mezzo Soprano: Louise Ratcliffe
Tenor: Philip Lloyd Holtam
Baritone: Gareth Rhy Davies

Aldworth Philharmonic Orchestra
Leader: Neil MacLean
Conductor: Andrew Taylor

Not sure why I decided to do this. However, it was a day away from London, the weather was nice, and I enjoyed singing the 9th again.

Monday, 16th January 2012, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave, New York, NY 10019.

Karl Jenkins: The Peacemakers (World Premier)

Soprano: Antoni Mendezona
Violin: Jorge Avila
Flutes: Kara Deraad Derke

NY Jazz
Soprano Saxophone: Rob Derke
Electric Bass: Carlo de Rosa

Uillenn Pipes: Joseph Mulvanerty

Conductor: Karl Jenkins

The Joke has its own page.

I never imagined, when I was perched on the edge of the stage at the Broadway Theatre in Catford, that – one day – I’d be singing at Carnegie Hall. I’d heard the joke, and the story of Florence Foster Jenkins, but performing there was as likely as having a Xmas No1.

And, to be honest, it was less practice, practice, practice than an unhappy event providing the resources for a happy one.

There was a bit of a nervous moment when, at the airport, I was asked the reason for my trip. I said holiday, and then mentioned that I’d be singing at Carnegie Hall whilst I was there. Did I have a work visa for that?

Um…

New York in winter is cold. Not the sort of cold we get in the UK, which is greatly ameliorated by the Jet Stream. It’s face-numbingly, mouth-freezingly, eye-wateringly cold. It’s buying a woolly hat from the street vendor because you are convinced the skin over your skull will shrivel so much, and so quickly, that your hair will pop out. It’s also – where you can – walking with your back to the wind that blasts you down the street. And coffee in Astro Restaurant on 6th Avenue at every available opportunity.

This was the trip where I first had proper false nails done. I’d always bought the sets from the supermarket/chemist before: the glue was never strong enough, the nails were never the right size/shape, and the end result was short-lasting and unsatisfactory. We found a salon along one of the streets and I decided to take the plunge. One set of crimson talons later, we resumed our wander around the city that never sleeps.

Perhaps this isn’t the place to admit that, apart from The Peacemakers, I’ve not heard any of Karl Jenkins’s music before. For me, it’s in the same genre as David Fanshawe, and the latter’s African Sanctus has made me not want to listen to anything else in that genre. However, even if I don’t really like a particular piece, I will still sing as if it’s the most wonderful music ever written because that’s what I’m on stage for – to look as though I’m enjoying it.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that an experience is better than any possession. How I was able to be in New York may not have been how I would have wished, but I owed it to myself to get something happy from what had been a miserable few months.

A world premiere – World, mind you – in Carnegie Hall! If you’re not enjoying it just for that, you’re doing something wrong.

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.