2000-15 and more overseas travel
As stated earlier, one of my life's ambitions had been to take part in a performance of Mahler 8, but I had already been thwarted three times. So I was delighted to discover that it was going to be staged in Bath in 2000 to celebrate the millennium. Jason Thornton and the Bath Philharmonia had played every other Mahler symphony, and this was to be the climax of the project. A large choral force was required, so they contacted all the choirs in Bath to find out who would be interested. I asked the organisers if I could approach Bournemouth, and they said they would be interested in singers from anywhere, so I contacted them and about 60 singers agreed to take part. I did not attend any rehearsals in Poole, but instead joined up with choir 1, rehearsing in Bath on a Sunday afternoon. Choir 2 rehearsed on a different day and we didn't combine until the final rehearsals.
The performance took place in Bath Green Park Station, a fine glass roofed building that had been constructed for the Somerset and Dorset Railway. When the line closed in the 1960s, the area was converted into a market with small shops around the edge, and a large car park just outside. The council agreed that for this special event it could be turned into a large concert area. A temporary stand was placed at the back to hold the choir, and the orchestra were laid out in front of them. The front section (the most expensive seats) were under the roof, while the rest of the audience were in the car park. My mother, who had a seat at the front of the second section of seats felt rather distant from the action, so what it was like at the very back I hate to think. One of the shops behind the choir seating was a restaurant, and Mater Gloriosa who has a short but dramatic part to sing towards the end of the work sang from an upstairs window.
Mahler 8 is a work that divides opinion, though I think that most singers who have performed it enjoy the experience. It is very difficult in places, but there are long enough stretches without the choir so that the voice should not get completely tired. The first part is a setting of the Latin hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, better known in English as Come Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, though if you are only familiar with the plainsong version this will come as a shock. It is pretty intense the whole way through, and has a thrilling though tricky climax. There is a sudden change of tempo; two groups of singers sing "Gloria"; then the children's choir come in, though it is inaudible in most performances I have come across; then starting with the second basses the choir sings "Amen" in a series of rising scales culminating in a fortissimo E flat chord with plenty of top B flats from the sopranos.
The second part, which lasts for about an hour, starts off much more gently, and it is entirely instrumental for the first 15 minutes. A friend who was in the audience for another performance told me afterwards that that was her favourite bit, much to my chagrin. The text is from the final scene from Goethe's Faust, and while it is useful to know what it is all about, the words are quite obscure in places. That doesn't stop it being a breath-taking piece of music. Towards the end, after a long slow orchestral interlude, the whole choir comes in pianissimo. For us second basses, it can be more than pianissimo in places if you have difficulty reaching a bottom B flat. It is minimum volume for quite a stretch, so the larger the choir, the more spectacular it is. After some dramatic contributions from the soloists, eventually the choir come in at full volume, initially with just organ accompaniment, but eventually it builds up to a huge climax, at which point the offstage brass come in. Though that is the end of the choir's contribution, this could be siad to be the climax of the work, because it reintroduces the main theme from the first part, uniting what are otherwise two completely different texts and subjects.
Though not quite everything went to plan, it was certainly a memorable evening, and justified conductor Jason Thornton's confidence that he could bring off such an ambitious project.
Over the years I had the opportunity to take part in many interesting concerts, including two performances of Berlioz's Requiem with young musicians. The first, in Poole in 1997, was with the Dorset Youth Orchestra who under the baton of Wayne Marshall really rose to the occasion. The second was at Symphony Hall in Birmingham with the National Youth Orchestra under Roger Norrington. I think I only heard about it about three days before the concert, and I was told to turn up and say I was a member of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus. It sounded as though they were trying to round up as many experienced singers as they could. In the end there were hardly any members of the Chorus that I recognised, but there were just enough singers to do the work justice. It was fascinating to work with the NYO. I have attended a few BBC Proms where they have performed, and the playing has always been memorable. It is also a poignant event, as it is always the end of their season, and for many of those at the top end of the age range it could well be the last chance they every have in their lives to play in a top quality orchestra.
I've also joined the Chorus on a number of overseas trips. In June 2010 we went to Vienna and gave two concerts that combined pieces that would have been familiar to Viennese audiences with music by British composers. After singing Mozart and Bruckner we were able to introduce them to Stanford, Wesley and Pearsall. Apart from the concerts, there are three particular memories of the trip: visiting the opera for a great performance of Lohengrin; seeing the Danube which was definitely not what you could in any way call blue; and singing Locus Iste outside St Stephen's Cathedral while we were waiting to go in for our concert.
I joined up again with the Chorus the following month. They had in recent years built up a relationship with the Amadeus Orchestra, which has become a training ground for young musicians who have gone on to play for all the major British orchestras. They put on concerts in Exeter Cathedral and Wells Cathedral which included Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony. It was at one of the rehearsal's for this piece that the sad news came through that David Fanshawe had suffered a fatal stroke. This came as a great shock to those of us who knew him as he was only 68 and seemed indestructible.
In 2011 the Chorus celebrated its centenary and for the anniversary commissioned a work from their president, Richard Blackford. He chose to write a piece called Not in Our Time about how religion is continually being used as a pretext or justification for war. It starts with a musical evocation of the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001, and the text is bookended by two contrasting speeches by American presidents. Firstly there is George Bush's evangelical call to arms demonizing the "evildoers". There then follows rhetoric down the ages by Christians and Muslims, and descriptions of crusades and other conflicts. Finally, however, he uses the words of Barack Obama from a speech he made to students at Cairo University on the theme of reconciliation. The first performance took place in Cheltenham, fittingly on September 11th 2011. It was then repeated a few days later in Poole, and I attended that concert. It struck me as a very powerful piece, and I wondered if I would have an opportunity to sing it.
Fortunately the opportunity arose quite soon. The Chorus was invited to perform the work at the Millennium Park in Chicago, and I had the opportunity to join them. I attended two or three rehearsals in Poole, and I was able to gain confidence; it's quite tricky in places, but when you have people all around who know it well, it makes life easy. It was a really enjoyable trip. We stayed in a fine hotel in downtown Chicago, there was sufficient rehearsal time, and enough time to explore the city after the concert. The other performers were the choir and orchestra from North Western University, and the conductor was Robert Harris, who was Professor of Conducting and Director of Choral Organisations at the university. It was a real privilege to perform on the stage at Millennium Park, the scene of Barack Obama's acceptance speech following the 2008 presidential election, not to mention concerts by renowned performers such as the Rolling Stones.
Because David Fanshawe had had such a close relationship with the Chorus, they were invited to join other choirs with whom he had been associated in a celebration of his life. This took place on March 31st 2012 at the Royal Festival Hall in London. He is of course most well known for African Sanctus, and in fact we had a chance to perform it the weekend before at the Colston Hall in Bristol. But this event was a chance to hear also a number of other works. These included Dover Castle; a setting of The Owl and the Pussycat for children's choir, accompanied by a recording of an outboard motor; Lament of the Seas in which the choir sang one line - "For those in peril on the sea"; and Trafalgar, a piece he had been composing when I visited his house once - he was very excited about it because it was built around a setting of the words "England expects that every man will do his duty". This was a really special concert and I hope we did the great man justice.
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