1995-99 and some notable concerts but no Grammy for me
At the time of writing this, it is more than 30 years since I have been a regular member of the Symphony Chorus (and paid any subs), but I have been fortunate enough to maintain my involvement and take part in all sorts of ventures with them. Carolyn Date became Chorus Manager in 1993, and has contacted me whenever reinforcements are needed in the bass section. People regularly thank me for my support, and in 2017 I was privileged to be made an Honorary Member, but I feel so fortunate that I can continue to be involved. I try not to take anything for granted, and attend as many rehearsals as I can when required, even though it is a four hour round trip; and I know I have to be at my best all the time to justify my invitation. Bath Bach Choir ("City of" has now been dropped from their title) is a higher priority if there is a clash, but this rarely happens.
One occasion when it did, I was contacted to see if I could join up with the Chorus for Belshazzar's Feast. There was to be a performance on a Sunday in Swansea, then the following day it was to be recorded in Winchester. I said I would be happy to sing in Swansea, but I had a rehearsal in Bath on the Monday which I did not want to miss. So I met up with the coach from Bournemouth at a service station on the M4 and took part in the Swansea concert. The subsequent recording, which I missed, was so successful that it won a Grammy. Do I get a virtual Grammy? On the other hand, if I had been singing on it, would it have still got the Grammy?
In September 1996 the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra were booked to perform the three big Elgar oratorios - The Dream of Gerontius, The Apostles and The Kingdom over a single weekend under the baton of Sir Richard Hickox at the Barbican in London. The Chorus were invited to join them for all three concerts, but it was decided, reluctantly, that that was a step too far. So they declined Gerontius and the London Symphony Chorus took their place. I jumped at the chance to join up. This was my first time singing The Kingdom, so I went out and bought the CD and a score. I also attended two all day rehearsals in August. A hotel near the concert hall was booked for the Saturday night, but a number of us also went up for the Friday so that we could hear Gerontius. It was a real pleasure to sit back and listen to an excellent performance from a top choir, who set the bar high for us. And it was certainly a privilege, though quite tiring, to do the other two works on consecutive days, and I felt at the end of it all that it was a job well done. The Elgar oratorios are very popular with choirs, but they seem to be less so with the orchestral players, apart from the true Elgarians. Maybe it is because the singers get the best bits.
As I stated earlier, one of the attractions of my new choir was that it was a chance to perform music that I had not sung before. In my first concert with them we performed a selection of numbers from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. So it was slightly ironic that a year or two later the Symphony Chorus had a chance to take part in a complete concert performance of the opera under the conductor Wayne Marshall. This was so successful that when he was asked by the BBC to perform it in a Promenade Concert, he chose to use them again. One of my ambitions (as I am sure it is of most musicians) was to perform in a Prom, so I was delighted to get the opportunity to join up. I attended as many rehearsals as I could, and took part in a concert at the Barbican that included a suite of numbers.
Because it lasts for nearly four hours, it was not possible to rehearse the whole work on the day of the concert. So we went up a day early, checked into a hotel, and then rehearsed in a hall that was just about suitable. The next morning we went along to a rehearsal in the Albert Hall. It was most pleasing to see that when we arrived there the prommers were already queueing up for the performance, even though it was about 9 hours to the start. We spent the morning rehearsing as much of the parts that involved the chorus as was possible, but there was one section towards the end that we never touched at all.
The performance was really special, and I thoroughly enjoyed being part of the occasion. I think we did ourselves justice and we got good reviews. There are a number of well known numbers in the opera, including Summertime, and on this occasion it was one of the most memorable; the men don't sing in it, but the way the sopranos and altos provided the backing seemed close on perfect to me. Later in the first act there was a bit I was not looking forward to. The scene is where Sporting Life picks a fight with Robbins and kills him and the choir express their horror. Before this the choir sing a short passage and then there is about 50 bars rest. The orchestral part is a constant rhythm and the only cue in our score to our next entry was about four chords that were indistinguishable from much of what had gone before. In every rehearsal I had missed the entry, but this time I stuck my head in the copy and counted the bars religiously. This time I got it right and came in fortissimo. I was so pleased with myself that at the next interval I turned to the person who I was sitting next to and told him I'd got it right for once. He replied that he had missed it completely because he was too busy watching what was going on. Though it was a concert performance, the soloists acted out as best they could on the stage and I had missed some quite dramatic goings on in front of me.
The first ever prom I went to I stood in the gallery, but of all the many I have attended since then I have never prommed. I wouldn't fancy standing all the way through a regular concert, let alone one this long, and I was full of admiration for the way the prommers were so attentive and quiet all the way through; almost as much as my admiration for our sopranos who had a top B flat held over about four bars on the very last page, which came over brilliantly.
One significant feature of the performance was that all the soloists were black, led by Willard White and Cynthia Hayman in the title roles. One reviewer pointed out that the choir was entirely white, in an implied criticism, though the response to that is that it had been chosen by the black conductor. I wish I knew why in all my years of choral singing the number of black colleagues I have sung with can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. I would like to think that my colour does not affect the way I sing. The old cliché is that black people have a better sense of rhythm. Physically I am completely uncoordinated, but I think I can keep a reasonably strong rhythm in my head. There are some songs in Porgy and Bess such as "A woman is a sometime thing" and "I got plenty of nuttin'" where I felt completely at home, and the Chorus were right on the ball. At one point I got a bit carried away and came in a bar early, but when I listened to the recording it was not obvious, though the people around me did notice!
The following year I was involved in another broadcast when the Chorus joined up with the BBC National Chorus and Orchestra of Wales for a performance of John Adams' Harmonium in St David's Hall in Cardiff, which was to be broadcast on the BBC. I had not sung it before, though the Chorus had. The first time I heard it I wondered if it was beyond my expertise, so I went and bought a CD of the piece. When I learn a new work from a recording, my aim is to be able to sing it at least as well as the performers on it; I must confess that my reaction on hearing this one was that if we can't do better than them it is not worth bothering.
The work is in three movements, each of which presents a different challenge. The first is minimalist (a setting of a poem by John Donne), in that the singers are required part of the time to sing the same word (or just syllable) repeatedly on the same note, so counting is crucial; at other times they are singing the words of the poem in an irregular rhythm. As the movement approaches its climax, the whole choir sings "dat" about 27 times, at which point everyone stops at once - you don't want to be the one that carries on! The second movement (like the third) is a setting of a poem by Emily Dickinson. It is very slow with long phrases again in irregular rhythms, some of which are very exposed. At the end of the poem there is a 5 second pause after which the orchestra starts to build from a very soft beginning to a thrilling climax. It leads straight into the last movement where the choir come in with fortissimo top Gs. The first few pages of this movement are pitched almost entirely beyond what is supposed to be bass range, a struggle, but thrilling; on my CD the basses sang an octave lower, which is cheating and does not have the same effect. The second half of the movement is much calmer, but here counting is a real problem, apart from the altos who sing the same short phrase over and over again. For the rest of us it is a combination of short phrases and irregular rhythms, but not quite so exposed; I got completely lost at one point but it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
I did enough rehearsals to feel reasonably confident. We had the tutti rehearsal in Cardiff the evening before, so I met up with a coach coming from Bournemouth at an M4 service station. Unfortunately we arrived rather late as the driver seemed to be following Emily Dickinson's words from the second movement
"He slowly drove, he knew no pace".The conductor was Grant Llewellyn, and we went through the whole work making sure the trickier bits were sound. He then said he would like to run through the piece without a break. So we sang it from the beginning, and we were just starting the final movement when all the lights went out. The conductor blew his top, threw his score on the ground and yelled out "I said I wanted to do it without a break". A voice from the back said "It's not just us, it's the whole of Cardiff". Unbeknownst to us, there was a violent thunderstorm raging outside which took out the power across the whole of the city.
The concert itself went extremely well, so much so that later in the year the BBC chose the performance of Harmonium for their Music Magazine disc of the month. I have a copy and of all the recordings in which I have been involved, the second movement is what I am most proud of.
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