1981-83 and Sir Charles Groves' memorable return
The 1981 Poole Proms involved two concerts - the Beethoven Choral Symphony and African Sanctus. Even though both pieces had been performed fairly recently, neither are straightforward, so quite intense rehearsing was required. David Fanshawe had originally been booked to do his regular introduction about his recordings in Africa, but he had gone off on his travels again, this time to the South Pacific. So Geoff Hughes bravely stepped into his shoes. He did his best, but it wasn't the same.
The intensity continued as we had three performances of the Verdi Requiem in a week. It was the first time I had sung it but many of the choir were familiar with it, so it was possible to get it to performance standard in time. First it was at the Colston Hall in Bristol. We travelled up in three coaches and had time for a partial rehearsal. The bass soloist was under the weather, so Victor Thomas, the chorus chairman, prepared to stand in for him, though in the end he was not required to. After the performance two of the coaches were outside waiting to take us home, but the third had been trapped in a car park by a lorry whose driver had parked it for the night. So the coach company had to send for a replacement to come from Bournemouth. Not the ideal preparation for the singers who were due to sing the next night in the Bournemouth Winter Gardens. The thing I remember most about that performance was the extra trumpeters for the Tuba Mirum. The Winter Gardens was more a theatre than a concert hall and had a proscenium arch. The sound from the trumpets bounced back off it into the chorus to produce a thrilling sound for us, if not for the audience.
The next spring saw the long-awaited return of Sir Charles Groves. Ever since he had had to cancel the War Requiem concert in 1979 he had maintained contact with the chorus stating his wish to conduct us again, and the opportunity came with Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, a work that meant so much to him. We had one chorus rehearsal with him, and from what I remember he didn't have much to say. He took us through the whole piece and made the occasional observation, but generally it was clear what he wanted with his beat and gestures, not that he was the most demonstrative of conductors.
The performance was indeed special, and everyone rose to the occasion. The soloists, Sandra Browne, John Treleavan and Matthew Best, were as good as you could ever wish for, and the orchestra were magnificent. The choir have to wait well over ten minutes before they are required, and by that time such a high standard had been set, that we had to deliver. And we did. I remember thinking immediately afterwards that I never wanted to sing it again because it could not possibly be as good. I've since gone back on that, but it still brings back special memories.
The orchestra were at this time in the process of making a series of records of English music. The Chorus had contributed the previous year with Elgar's Bavarian Highlands and Vaughan Williams' In Windsor Forest. While I am not ashamed to admit that I enjoy hearing myself singing (with other people, definitely not on my own), the recording process is quite boring, and probably doesn't get the best out of us. It is particularly frustrating when you don't get a chance to perform the music in public. The Elgar we performed a year or two later, but I have not come across the Vaughan Williams since.
Now we were asked to record Stanford's Songs of the Sea and Songs of the Fleet, with Norman del Mar conducting and Benjamin Luxon as the bass soloist. These are fun pieces to sing and generally not too difficult. The words by Henry Newbolt, however, are rather old-fashioned and very strange at times. We were using copies that only had the chorus parts in, so it wasn't until we heard the bass soloist that we knew what some of the songs were about. In Songs of the Fleet there is one entitled The Little Admiral about Lord Nelson that includes the words
There are queer things that only come to sailor men.When those words were sung, the rehearsal had to stop because the choir and orchestra were laughing so much. Politically incorrect, I know, but much of it had to do with the way Benjamin Luxon put feeling into the word "never".
They're true but they're never understood.
We were preparing this music while the Falklands War was very much in the news. The first of the Songs of the Fleet describes a splendid fleet assembling and then departing for some unspecified engagement. The more we sang it, the more poignant it became.
In November 1982 we sang a piece that was completely new to me, Bliss's Morning Heroes. It was described as a "heroic choral symphony" and was written in memory of his brother who like him had served in the First World War, but unlike him did not survive. The orator was the distinguished actor, Robert Hardy, who was excellent, in spite of the fact that he admitted he could not read music. Then the next March we sang Bach's St Matthew Passion with the part of the Evangelist sung by Neil Jenkins who was to go on to publish his own edition of the work.
In May the Chorus was introduced for the first time to Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, which it has performed regularly since. It is a piece that is quite scary to perform, because about an hour into the work the choir makes its first entry pianissimo and unaccompanied. Geoff Hughes told us not to worry about going flat "because everyone does", but we just about kept our pitch. We gave three performances, firstly in Portsmouth Guildhall, then in Bournemouuth, and finally in the Royal Festival Hall in London. That should have been a great opportunity for the Chorus's profile to be raised, but the Orchestral Management didn't include us in any of the publicity. So for the reviews we were "an unnamed choir".
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