My first concert
In early 1979 my employer - Minster Automation - transferred me to their head office in Wimborne, and I bought a house in the nearby village of Stourpaine. A few weeks before I moved, I met up with a colleague from Wimborne, Roy Comben, who happened to be a good tenor and very much involved with the local musical life. He suggested I join the Dorset Bach Cantata Club, which met on three weekends a year to study, usually, a couple of cantatas. The first session I attended, I met a couple who sang with the Bournemouth Municipal Choir, who were due to perform Britten's War Requiem with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Sir Charles Groves. They suggested I apply to join and they gave me the phone number of the choir secretary.
I called the number when I was ready, and spoke to a rather formal sounding man who asked if I had any experience of choral singing. When I told him I had been singing with Croydon Philharmonic Choir and we had just sung the first performance of a work by Elizabeth Maconchy, his tone of voice changed completely; he said he had actually been at that concert and was very impressed with the way the choir had tackled the piece. I also told him I had sung the War Requiem when I was a student, so he was happy to arrange for me to attend a rehearsal after which I would be auditioned.
I turned up as arranged with my own copy, and joined in the rehearsal of a piece that I had sung before but very few of the choir had, which made me feel comfortable. I was sitting near Victor Thomas who was the Chorus chairman, and I think he mentioned to Geoff Hughes, the chorus master, that I clearly knew the piece, so the audition was a relative formality, much to my relief.
However the rehearsal had started with the news, that most people knew already, that Sir Charles Groves had suffered a heart attack. The story we were told was that he had cancelled all engagements apart from this concert. This was because when he had been principal conductor of the Symphony Orchestra in the 1960s he had built up a good relationship with the Chorus. Since the time he had left to take over at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra he had not had a chance to conduct the Chorus, so he was particularly looking forward to this opportunity to renew acquaintance. But we knew that this was not going to happen, and Sir David Willcocks had been provisionally booked as a replacement.
This was the last concert of the Bournemouth Municipal Choir, as it was about to become the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. It was ceasing to be an independent choral society and was to come under the control of the Western Orchestral Society, the management company of the Symphony Orchestra and the Bournemouth Sinfonietta. It also meant that they no longer sounded as though they were a group of singing dustmen!
Now that I was a proper member of the choir, they had to find a place for me to sit. As it happened there was one bass who was not doing that concert, so I sat in his seat. You wouldn't have thought that a problem, but the seating arrangements were very rigid. That aside, I settled in quickly, feeling very lucky to find myself singing in a choir of such quality. As expected, Sir Charles in due course cancelled his appearance, and Sir David Willcocks was engaged. He rehearsed us for the first time at our final choir only practice. The thing I remember most is him taking us through a particular passage that occurs three times in the work, including at the very end. It is very slow and difficult to control, as well as being prone to flatness as it is unaccompanied. He was a master of pitch control and could tell whether we were a quarter tone flat. At the third attempt we were spot on to general satisfaction.
I was less impressed with him in the orchestral rehearsal, with the way that he approached the big climax in the Libera Me. I had been surprised when I saw the score for the first time that the choir was singing fortissimo. In the recording you hear this great wall of sound from the orchestras, and these barely audible voices crying out "Libera me!" ("set me free!"). The effect is dramatic, and I have always imagined that provided it is not inaudible the sound produced would work. However Sir David wanted to hear more. He asked the brass not to play so loudly, even though the principle trombone pointed out that the marking was ffff. And he asked the choir to sing flat out, which is not appreciated at the end of a long rehearsal when the concert is due to start in two hours time. Nevertheless the performance was first rate and well received.
Go to Next Page