It's Passion People!

The passion season is a wonderful time for a chorister as it is filled with rehearsals.  I was put in the passion mood early as I have already completed a performance of Silvestrov's Requiem for Larissa in January and a concert of Taneyev's St. John of Damascus otherwise known as the Russian Requiem. in February. ( I wrote a post about it earlier)  Now, the month of March consists of rehearsals of Verdi's Requiem and Haydn's Seven Last Words of Christ.

This is my third go around with the Verdi's very operatic Requiem and so I don't need to spend much time rehearsing at home so it  is causing me no stress whatsoever. A relief after the Silvestrov in January when I had to do so much rehearsing on my own and it still yielded minimal results.  Some may call the Verdi cheesy or over the top but I don't see why one would bother with those terms - it's quite simply called PASSION, people!  There is no more wrathful an experience as the Verdi Dies Irae, there is no more desperate a plea as his Salva me, no more copious tears flow than flow during his Lacrymosa.  The orchestra is huge, the choir is huge, and emotion is spilling out all over the place!  This is not a Deutsches Requiem by any stretch of the imagination, there is no contained resignation nor comfort in it whatsoever!  This is pure Italian Opera!   My score still contains the markings from my first performance of it with Bramwell Tovey - the mostly consist of the reminder "Think Italian".   This work also contains some of my best conductor memories as told in my post titled,"Ya, I know him."   I am loving being wrapped up by Verdi again and being held by all this passion and drama in order to release it all on April 19th with the WSO at the Centennial Concert Hall. 

Before that emotional release  comes Good Friday and the First Mennonite Church's offering of Haydn's Seven Last Words of Christ.  With apologies to Josef, this work does appear cheesy at times.  It was originally written as a string quartet (no words) for a Good Friday service at a Spanish church.  Each movement was to represent one of the Seven last words of Christ - which are not words at all but statements.  Later on the words were added in German.  We are singing an English translation of those words. Working with translation seems to have messed up some of the lyric/dynamic combo.  What I mean is that there is a sudden Forte for the word "gentleness".  I have not checked the German score to see what words accompany that "forte" so it maybe that this is just Haydn's sense of humour coming out.  He is known for injecting humour in his works, although I think a passion piece is an unlikely place for this to come out.    Upon reflection I should not call this work cheesy because the Passion story is just that moving and if the music reflects that then it is merely being true to text.  Jesus' words from the cross are extremely moving and the music does show this.  This link, Seven Last Words, gives you the whole work  in German language. Our performance is in English, however, so please feel free to attend on Good Friday at 7pm.

Laryngitis

To be voiceless is one of the most anxiety producing states for a singer such as I.  I need to sing.  For the last 10 days I have been quite nervous about the state of my voice.  From 2 days of only being able to whisper to 8 of speaking an octave below my usual register I am wondering if I will be able to perform in the upcoming Mozart/Taneyev concert.
I have received all kinds of advice and have followed most of it.  I have drank pots of tea with honey, lemon and whiskey in various combinations.  I have rubbed Vicks VapoRub on chest, back, neck and feet.

Last week I arrived in the rehearsal room ready to  go over my part with heart and brain.  My conductor did not want me to do even this as he said that alone could strain my vocal chords.  He said just thinking my line would tire out my voice so I only did a bit of that and mostly listened to the other voice parts.  It was during this exercise that I was hit by the beauty of the soprano line and the skill with which our nimble ladies navigated their Mozart Melismas.  In the end it was quite nice to have spent the rehearsal time really listening to the other voice parts but this did nothing to secure my part in my voice. I am quite worried about not being ready in time. 

Taneyev and Mozart

     One of the wonderful things about the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir is that they open themselves up to accepting associate members for certain concerts.  I am pleased to say that I have joined them for many a concert since the 1980's and am doing so again for March 2, 2014.  On this day we will be accompanied by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and will be performing two contrasting works.       
     The first, St. John of Damascus by Sergei Taneyev, decidedly Russian sounding piece, while the second is the mass in C Minor by Mozart.  Rehearsing both side by side can be a challenge as one requires a full rich legato sound while the other a light and airy feel.  I sing the Russian much more naturally even though the language is unfamiliar the long mourning lines are part of my DNA.  Mozart, as they say writes for the voice, but it must be a light soprano voice. These long melismas of his in this work require a nimbleness that I may be losing.  Hopefully I will get it into my voice by performance time.

     Taneyev (1856-1915) was a student and later a friend of the great Tchaikovsky and was a concert pianist, being a Russian expert on Bach and Beethoven.  He was also a guest in the home of Leo  Tolstoy so he is certainly someone well surrounded by the Russian artistic types.  I love this work that we are singing, St. John of Damascus, it is also known as the Russian Requiem.  It is beautifully sad in that, oh so Russian of ways.  The lyrics are also written by a Russian, a distant relative of Leo Tolstoy, A.K. Tolstoy which begin:

 I travel along a path that is unknown to me,
I travel between fear and hope;
my sight is weak, my breast is chilled,
my hearing is dim, my eyelids droop….“

 
The short 25 minute work is full of love and compassion and is a meditation on the meaning of human existence, of life and death.  Play just a few seconds of the this link and you will be overwhelmed with the beauty of Russian pathos.  That is right, click on" Russian pathos" and Taneyev will be there for you.
     The  Mozart piece, written in 1782, is an unfinished work just like his Requiem.  We know the Requiem was never completed as Mozart died but why he didn't finish the Mass in c minor is a mystery.  He did write it to celebrate his marriage and had vowed to have a work performed at their first anniversary.  He did indeed premiere this work in Salzburg, a year after his marriage and his young wife was the soloist, but it was incomplete.  He never finished it and so, there we have it, we sing it in its incomplete form.  Yet another Mozart work shrouded in mystery.   I have never performed this Mass in C minor so I am delighted to have the chance to do it and to be accompanied by such a great orchestra and work with such a passion filled conductor as Yuri Klaz. The concert is on March 2nd at 3pm at the St. Boniface Cathedral in Winnipeg.  Get your tickets in advance.  Information at the concert link above, and hear both these works side by side.

Larissa's Requiem - Valentin Silvestrov

 

Valentin Silvestrov

  I am in the midst of rehearsals for the Winnipeg Symphony's New Music Festival(NMF).  The NMF is a wonderfully successful venture on part of the Symphony - a week of merriment and showcasing composers from our time.
     Participating in the NMF is a "hit or miss" experience.  There have been some works where I have positively blushed performing them, wishing I were not inflicting this tripe on the audience but there have been times of supreme bliss, such as Arvo Part's Hymn to St. Cecelia a few years back.  Also, for me, the music for NMF is always difficult in that it is completely unpredictable and filled with dissonant harmonies, so that my limited musical abilities are highly challenged.
     This month I am very moved by the offering of Valentin Silvestrov, the Ukrainian composer, born 1937.  I have been rehearsing his Requiem for Larissa, which he composed from 1997-99 for his late wife.  He had thought at the time that this would be the last piece of music he would every write and indeed his complete heart and soul seem to be in this piece.  Like the other NMF pieces I have done it has been difficult to learn, perhaps the most difficult piece I have ever learned, and yet I am not turned away from it, instead I am at times weighed down by the force of his grief.
     The piece begins in a most profound way, the opening bar is a bar of nothing.  No choir, no solo, no orchestra, not a single instrument.  It is as though Valentin is saying, "My wife has died and now there is nothing."  This nothing is not a nice 4/4 nothing it is a very off-kilter 5/4 bar of nothing.  Yup.  Not only is there nothing to say, this nothing has unbalanced him.  The opening page contains 12 bars and the time signature changes 7 times!  See what I mean?  The man does not know how to walk through life without his wife. 
     The first word sung is "Requiem", the second is to be aeterna (eternal) and for 3 whole bars he tries to finish the word but can't, in the end the women sing only "aetr".  This device, of not being able to finish one's words, is used throughout the piece so that we as choristers are often left to sing only "a, oh, mm"; there is much humming and many a bar ends with an "mm".  All this fragmentation, and leaps and descents of 9ths contribute to the unsettling feeling that all is not right. For me the singer, it is a great task.  Often one does not get much support from fellow choristers either since in the 3rd movement the altos are divided into 6 parts!  One voice section - 6 different parts!!  Challenging, to say the least.
     In movement 4 we get some reprieve from this as  a lone tenor, from within the choir (as the instructions state) sings a complete poem by the poet Shevchenko, evoking a lovely Slavic melody filled with beauty and pathos, although even here the time signature keeps changing so that I can rarely look off the page, even though the altos are now only in 4 parts. 
     The 5th movement echoes Mozart and it is so" Mozartarian pretty" that it is difficult to believe the master himself did not write it.  A lovely, lovely piece of music played in turns by a solo violin or solo piano while the choir attempts to sing the Agnus Dei, but all the accidentals, fragmented words and time signature changes make this difficult, but there is much encouragement and comfort in the beauty of the solo violin and piano.  The 6th movement is much like the first and then the 7th and last movement contains 90 bars of mostly orchestration; 4 bars have the choristers singing "Requiem Aternam" this time finishing the word, although the altos are not yet ready to speak and say only (o) for 7 beats and then 5 beats all alone on our (m).
     We have had our first rehearsal with the performance conductor, Alexander Mickelthwate, and I was surprised at how much he seemed into this piece.  With all the running around he has had to do rehearsing and learning new music he seemed to have a special place in his heart for this work.   He gave the choir some brilliant instruction and I feel the piece is really coming along.  We have 3 orchestra rehearsals now and then - Ta Da- it will be performance time.  Here is the link for the NMF website.  http://www.newmusicfestival.ca/wp/ 

Out of my league

So the 2013-14 Choral Season has begun.   I am only involved in one Christmas concert this season which will be John Rutter's Magnificat with the church choir. 
Besides this I am now a member of a women's quartet!  This is not like choral singing at all.  For one thing there are four lines of music and only four singers which means no one else is singing my line except me!  This means I have to pay much more attention to notes, dynamics, and most of all breathing spots.  I am somewhat out of my league in this little group.  The Soprano is a beautiful soloist who gets paid to sing solos for various productions, the second soprano is a woman who also gets paid to sing Jazz etc and has gigs all over the city and has a wonderful CD out.  She is also a brilliant arranger!    The second alto sang solo at my wedding and has often performed the solo alto roles in church.  She also has been the lead singer in a fun German band.  Then there is the first alto - Yours Truly.  Oh brother!  So totally out of my league and thankfully I am singing a musical line that can mostly hide amongst the other three. 

We have sung in church twice and have two paid gigs coming down the pipe.  CRAZY!  We only have 4 songs in our repertoire at the moment as 4-part female arrangements of songs we want to sing are not that common and the brilliant arranger among us can't be arranging 24/7. 
So although not a choir, I may post updates on this quartet periodically on this blog.  We need a name!  We are known as The Schmucke Madchen (The Pretty Girls) amongst ourselves mostly because we like to roll low-german words around our tongues.  So - looking for name suggestions that are perhaps more fitting for 4 women of a certain age.

Little Singing but still Listening

Here I am at another summer break in the choral season.  My soul longs to be meeting with a choir regularly to rehearse and perfect something together.  Regular choir rehearsals keep me contained somehow and I am at a bit of a loss without them.    For now I have to be content  with looking ahead to the 2013/14 season when  I am hoping to be part of the following presentations:

Larissa's Requiem - Silvestrov - for the WSO New Music Festival
 John of Damascus - Taneyev
Mass - Mozart
Magnificat - Rutter
Requiem - Verdi

Most of these are new to me, save for the Rutter and Verdi so I will spend some time this summer playing the others on You Tube so I can get some of it in my ear.  Since I am not much of a musician I cannot play much on the piano for myself as then I have to play the right note at the right time which is really all too much to ask.

You may ask how such a non-musician sings in these choirs and I must ask that you not tell any of my conductors how pathetic I am.  I guess I am in by pure luck.  I have passed an audition or two but I guess they did not put much weight on the sight reading category.  I feel so lucky to be able to sing these great work with such fantastic musicians.  To keep myself in the game I seem to have to practice at home more than the average so at least I can do some of that in the summer, even if it mostly involves listening, and pathetically little singing. 

When rehearsals resume my voice will be out of shape but my desire will be strong!

Beethoven's 9th with Alexander Mickelthwate and WSO

The Ode to Joy.  Loud, high joyful.  Fast, screaming beautiful.  Uplifting whirlwind transcending our human problems.  Freude schoener Goetterfunken Tochter aus Elysium.  Freudig wie ein Held zum Siegen!   Powerful and spiritual and so popular it is used my many a comedy sketch.  Seen here if you click on Sesame Street  and of course done here by the hilarious Mr. Bean.
It is monumental and yet  I feel that the we as a choir are oblivious to that fact.  We are doing some monumentally sloppy singing.  Consonants in the wrong places, words pronounced incorrectly notes sung at the wrong time and we have even managed to belt them out at the wrong pitch.  Not sure what is going on, and I am not sure I have ever been in this situation.  That is, where there have been so very many errors by so very many people this close to performance.

Tonight we rehearsed with the orchestra and I really don't think we were heard over all that Beethoven blasting in front of us, which is just as well.    Ironically I did not see too many smiling faces in this Ode to Joy rehearsal - even the man tinkling away on the triangle looked slightly angry.  Alexander gets full points for trying - he smiled as he perched pixie-like on his podium and I felt sorry that we were not giving him much.
We have a dress rehearsal tomorrow and then it is 3 days of performances.  I really hope something or someone will whip us into shape.  Where is Jane Glover's withering gaze when you need her?
In the end it will be Ludwig himself who will rescue us, his writing genius will be able to transcend our inadequacies. (I hope)