Post COVID Choral Life?

 

Vaccination rates are above 50%, Winnipeg Blue Bombers are planning for full capacity crowds at the stadium and maybe, just maybe choral singing will return in the upcoming concert season.  It looks to me that the Corona Virus, named Covid-19, nightmare is coming to a slow end. ( I hope I did not jinx it by writing that.)   For the duration of the Pandemic choral singing was deemed to be a highly dangerous activity.  One of my choirs continued with a Corona version of itself and we recorded in small, masked voice part groups and our conductor was reduced to a sound mixing engineer.  This was better than no choir at all, but just barely.  The other 2 choirs did not even do this much, although one had a sing-along on Zoom, with us all on mute and singing to a recording which again, was better than nothing, but even less satisfying than the masked voice part recordings. 

When I looked through the upcoming Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra program I was delighted to see three choral concerts!  Handel's Solomon, Handel's Messiah, and Berlioz Mass.  I am hoping to sing in the latter two and am excited to attend the Solomon.  Ever since reading Jane Glover's book, Handel in London, in which she goes into some detail on his compositions, I have questioned why so few of his Oratorios are performed in Canada.  Perhaps, it's not just Canada but the whole world that is missing out?  Hopefully the WSO's inclusion of Handel's Solomon is the beginning of more Handel choral works to come.

A much more important question is:  Will I be included?  Will my conductors want me back?  Has this forced sabbatical given them an opportunity to discard singers?  Am I one of these?!  Will they realize that altos are easy to come by?  No need to stick with the old.  These anxious questions sit behind my latest need to do choral warmups in the shower, join Voce8 in their virtual rehearsals, sing the melisma passages in For Unto us a Child is Born and hold daily Happy Hours where cocktails soothe the anxious beast.  In answer to all the enquiring minds out there, yes, I sound much better after cocktail hour. 🍹🍸🍹

I hope my attempts to get in some kind of choral shape will be rewarded by a summons to sing with the WSO again and be allowed amongst the choristers, which is the most glorious place to be!  Everyone knows heaven is just one big angelic choir!  

Advent Season 2019

This Advent season I sang in two major concerts.  The first, on December 1st,  being a church concert with 5 small pieces.  2 Stanford Magnificat settings, 1 Schubert Magnificat setting, 1 Mozart Magnificat setting and Mozart's Coronation Mass.  Yes, all this in one concert.  We had beautiful soloists in Howard Rempel, Michael Martens, Anne Marie Dueck and Karis Wiebe, and a lovely little orchestra all under the direction of Yuri Klaz.
This was my first time singing Stanford, and although we are not Anglican I think our mainly Germanic choir did okay with is pretty pieces.  I do feel the these beautiful reflections of Mary, the Magnificat, are lovely words to sing out during Advent.

Maestra Jane Glover, this concert was my 3rd with Glover whose gaze can cut you to the quick.

      The second of my concerts was with the CMU Festival Chorus as guests of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, under the baton, make that, under the baton-less hands of the indomitable Jane Glover!  Jane performed the entire Messiah without baton and score!   She took some glorious liberties with tempo as in a grand ritard (not at the end) in the Hallelujah Chorus which she described as 'vulgar and Victorian" and thanked us for indulging her.  She called the opening of Worthy is the Lamb a choral recitative and declared there was no regular tempo there so we would all just have to watch her.  To the orchestra she said, 'I am still hearing bar line.  I want to hear syntax.  This is choral recitative."
      Her lovely expressive hands, body and face conveyed everything instrumentalists, soloists and choir required.  During "they rebuke" Ms. Glover's face was near collapsing, whereas in the "he trusted" movement she looked so vile and horrid that it scared even the basses in the back row!  Jane pays homage to Handel with every movement.  During, the soprano aria, "I know that my Redeemer liveth" Jane looked completely radiant.  She gave much of herself and expects, nay demands, the same from all of us!  She can be completely terrifying and is not one to mince words.  At the dress rehearsal, where conductors are always pressured by the union clock, she stated at the end , "there have been a lot of intonation problems in the orchestra tonight and if I had the time I should like to go over then but I trust you to take responsibility for intonation when you are getting paid."  Of course, this kind of talk gives a little boost to unpaid amateur choristers.
At the opening of our concert at the Centennial Concert Hall, Saturday December 7, 2019 the Symphony's executive director, Trudy Schroeder actually thanked the choristers for giving their time and talent to this Messiah.  This is the first time, that I can recall, the Symphony publicly thanking us like this.  It was very appreciated.
The CMU Festival, although able to perform great works, is a collection of amateurs who are all busy with their day to day lives and who sing for pleasure.  They spend a full work day at their real jobs and then come together to rehearse works as a labour of love.  When we perform, it is our happy place.   This is in contrast to the WSO players who are actually at work when performing and do other things for fun.
Soloists for this performance were Andrea Lett, soprano, Andrea Hill, mezzo, Zach Finkelstein, tenor and Stephen Hegedus, baritone.
You can read a review of the performance here.
MANNO, I MEAN, MENNONITE VS. LONDON ACCENT
A little tidbit from our first choral rehearsal with Ms. Glover:    Anytime we were singing a long U vowel sound such as in Hallelujah or the to of Unto Ms. Glovers discerning ears heard an umlaut.  She was quite visibly affronted by this sound.  She asked, quite incredulously, if this was a Manitoba accent and without waiting for an answer said to, "get rid of it."  Then it led her to tell, what she thought was an utterly hilarious anecdote about the mezzo Janet Baker who was so accustomed to singing Lieder that when needing a ride to the concert hall in London asked for someone to call her an Über.  Some of us offered some polite laughter but inwardly we puzzled, "you mean its not pronounced Über?"

Requiem Report

Here I am in the slump between Requiem season and Advent.  Yes, I know it is a rather long slump and it surprises me every time how sad I feel after the last big performance of the season.  By now you know I need to be working on a choral work, no matter how busy I am in my other life.  I won't be rehearsing a major work until September!
One way to get out of the slump is to relive the recent choral experience by writing about it.
VERDI REQUIEM -a choral highlight was performed in March 2019 with the CMU Festival Chorus and the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir conducted by Daniel Raiskin. I had earlier worked with Raiskin, notice how I can say that even though he is oblivious to my existence?  I continue to be intrigued by the individual chorister's knowledge of the work personality of a conductor while he/she remains ignorant of the individual  chorister and sees only this large mass of singers.   So back to Raiskin.  I was looking forward to working with him again because I had rehearsed and performed the Messiah with him in December and found him to be an excellent conductor for choirs!  This was a surprise because many orchestral conductors are not so.  Raiskin has a very clear beat combined with passion and the occasional jumping jack from the podium.
The venue, however, was not ideal and although the chorus was large we had to be slightly "miked".  This is not the best and some audience members did complain about the rather tinny sound in some parts.  This is because the Centennial Concert Hall is still without it's acoustic shell.  This is a travesty!

Giuseppe Verdi

Still the Verdi Requiem is a dramatic, grand scale work, with soloists and a huge orchestra and choir blasting away together, and then plaintively coming apart.   It is stunningly beautiful in parts and also downright frightening in others. I was thrilled to have a 2 night performance of it!  In fact I wish I were part of a permanent installation of it so I could sing it night after night to my death!  The Verdi does not come around that often, I sang it last 5 years ago, so I don't know how many more Verdis I will be allowed to be part of.  5 years from now I will be quite an old lady and the thought of being rejected from the choral stage is anxiety producing!  Mama Mia please let there be a few more Verdis coming from me!

Anton Bruckner

Bruckner Requiem is the next piece I worked on.  Never heard it before and yet I liked it from the first rehearsal on.  It has some beautiful parts in its short little life of 30 minutes.  Most notable is the men's chorus singing Hostias.  This work was performed with my wonderful non-auditioned church choir and a small orchestra which boasted WSO players amongst them.  Soloists Anne Marie Dueck, Karis Wiebe, James Magnus, and Howard Rempel were lovely!  The stellar Yuri Klaz was our conductor. It was truly enjoyable to learn a new work.  Alongside it we also presented Mendelssohn's unfinished oratorio, Christus.  This follows the Bach passion recipe of a tenor evangelist, (James Magnus) narrating the scene of screaming chorus crowds.  First Mennonite Church Choir loves performing anything by Mendelssohn and so of course we only wished it was a finished Oratorio so we could sing more of the same!  If you clink on the FMC choir link above you will hear us in a performance of Christus.

Now that it is over I must look ahead and see what is on the choral horizon for me.  I certainly will be joining the incomparable Jane Glover in presenting Messiah in December 2019 and I am crossing my fingers to receive an invitation to sing the Berlioz Messe Solennelle.  A work I have never sung nor heard until just now when I used it as my soundtrack to write this blog post.  Fingers crossed that next year at this time I will be performing it!  It's on the WSO listing for April 24, 25, 2020!

Jane and Wolfgang

I have had two Mozart Requiem rehearsals with the skillful Mozart expert, Jane Glover.  Dr. Glover knows Mozart well, having studied much about him during the writing of her book, Mozart's Women.  She feels him in every part of this work and wonderfully transfers those passions to the choir.

She read to us a letter in which Wolfie consoles his dying father, saying that death is the only sure thing in life and something to look forward to and it is in that spirit that we are to sing the opening movement, Requiem aeternam donna eis domine.: with quite an upbeat feel.
In the second movement, Dies irae, we can feel that as his own death drew nigh fear of it did arrive as shown by the use of trumpets of which Mozart had a fear, almost a phobia about in his childhood.

The one truly sorrowful movement is the No. 7 Lacrymosa.That day of tears and mourning....It was during the composition of this movement that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died, in fact the last line he wrote was, "the guilty man goes to his judgment" and he was gone...from this point on in the music Jane shared with us that she always feels Mozart departing  and the ever ordinary Franz Xaver Suessmayr taking over the composition with Mozart's sketches in mind.   There is a floating quality in the music in the next few bars where Mozart's soul is floating up, then in bar 22 human rage at the creator begins, we are singing "dona eis Requiem" but we are in a forte rage at God for having snatched Mozart from us at such an early age.  Then in bar 27, exhausted by our rage we are somewhat resigned to his passing and our own eventual demise.

Ms. Glover has a way of transmitting this knowledge to us so that we too can feel all this passion. 
She spoke with us in a soft confidential manner about "good old Sussmeyer."  She said that she herself has never and will never conduct any other Mozart Requiem.  She works exclusively with the Sussmeyer.  She acknowledges admiration for the brilliant one done by Robert Levin and mentions German composers who have completed the Requiem with much more skill than Sussmeyer, but is is Glover's contention that Sussmeyer was sitting on the edge of the bed taking dictation from Mozart, frantically trying to get all he could from the dying man and then did an adequate job of finishing it.  "We cannot abandon Sussmeyer now.  He was there and you can't replace that."   All this even though his Osanna is mere few seconds where as Mozart would have given us a glorious 4 minute
one.

The fact that the Suessmayr version is somewhat ordinary is part of the charm of the piece.  It shows that the Musical Genius has died and now the ordinary takes over but with glimmers of Mozart since Franz Suessmayr did have the master's musical outline.

 

Jane Glover has a wonderfully collaborative manner about her.  When she arrived on the rehearsal stage she went to shake hands with a few of the musicians who, I presume, were not at her afternoon rehearsal.  She welcomed the choir and we felt as though each one of us was a valued contributor to bringing out Mozart's genius.   She repeatedly uses the phrase, "My friends", as in "That was very good my friends"  or "All right my friends let's take it from bar 23, all of us."  The orchestra is showing respect to her and seem to have an appreciation for the choir.  It truly feels like we are all in this together. 

 

 One of my favourite expressions of Glover's, which I remember from working with her two years ago, is the musical dynamic "mezzo quelque chose" used when really it is not a mezzo piano not a mezzo forte, just a "whatever".   She likes to tell us that in the Rex Tremendae movement there is no mezzo quelque chose; it is either forte or piano. 

 

She often refers to the men as chaps, which is very charming as she has this wonderful British accent.  She sounds charming even as she says, after an attempt at the opening of Confutatis - "Well chaps, that was rather feeble.  You will need to try it again and with the realization that your manhood is at stake."   Ms. Glover,  the sopranos and altos were impressed with the chaps' second attempt. 

 

 Her conducting style is very easy to follow.  She has a masterful beat stroke with very clear entries and finishes and yet a very flowing style. She knows what she wants from each instrument and each voice part and is unapologetic about asking for it.   I do so like working with her.

 

  Mozart and Glover are an inspirational duo to be spending time with during passion week.



Ah Mozart!

It is a Sunday afternoon.  I have been wallowing in Brahms for the last few weeks as I rehearse it on Thursdays and listen to it to and from my work.  Readers of this blog know I LOVE BRAHMS!  So it is with a "I am not in the mood for Mozart at all" that I take my place at rehearsal.  The conductor has the pianist play the opening measures and, SHUDDER, I am grabbed into a scary place and can feel the composers trepidation as the piano takes the listener to the choir's forte opening of "Requiem"!  I am overcome by the emotion in the work in a way that has me tearing up at several points.
The first movement of Mozart's Requiem seems to be a perfectly crafted piece of music that one would not approach too casually and certainly not with the bored air I took my seat with.  No!  This is a fine piece of music filled with uneasiness but also glimmers of sweetness.  Mozart is to have said, "I fear I am writing the Requiem for myself." and this sentiment comes through in the opening bars.

I have sung this many times so why do I forget this fact between times? 

The choir I am rehearsing with, The Mennonite Festival Chorus, is a joy to work with.  This is a group that seems to know that singing this music is an honour and a sacred task.  The music is approached with reverence.  Not that there is not fun and laughter, and even cookies and coffee at break, but there is just a general seriousness about the music that I don't find in every choir.

I am so grateful to be rehearsing this work again.  Performance is on March 30th at the Centennial Concert Hall with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Jane Glover conducting.

Requiems 2013

Wolfgang

Johannes

In the Passion season of 2012 I sang The Brahms Requiem with the WSO and Mozart Requiem with my church choir.   This season it will be the reverse.  Since the church choir is doing the Brahms we have been rehearsing for two months already whereas we have not had one day of Mozart rehearsal.  Both will be performance ready by the Easter weekend.   Since both are so fresh to my voice and brain and so loved by my heart, the rehearsal stage will be easy!  Some unique aspects will be that we will do the 4 hands piano version of the Brahms instead of orchestra.  Although Brahms did transcribe his orchestral version for two pianos it was done mostly for commercial reasons as more and more people were enjoying playing orchestral works on their pianos at home.  Now here, too, I  feel that money is driving this decision: two pianos will be cheaper than the strings to have the pianos will most likely be cheaper - it better be as I can't think of any other reason to remove the strings from this work,  I have performed it with organ one time and it did not satisfy.

I have written about both of these Requiems in previous posts so don't want to repeat myself too much.  For an alto there is no question the Brahms is more enjoyable.  Johannes, as always, celebrates and honours the inner line by giving us beautiful moving and haunting lines to sing.  Mozart uses us as filler and keeps us humble.  Mozart writes for sopranos.

Other differences in the Requiems is that Mozart includes the traditional Dies Irae while Brahms does not even give us a peek of hell.  Brahms is all about comfort, and who better to provide comfort than the alto.  (You know,  I have to speak like this as my blog is "an Alto writes about her choral life.")
The exciting thing about doing the Mozart will be that we will be working with  Jane Glover who is a Mozart expert.  I look forward to hearing her take on a work that she is so intimate with.  I have posted about Ms. Glover earlier on this blog as we sang the St. John's Passion with her two years ago.  She runs a tight ship and I have an appreciation for that trait in a conductor.  She is the British born woman who conducts an accomplished baroque chorus out of Chicago.  She is the author of
Mozart's Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music a book I much enjoyed.
I will write more as rehearsals progress.

Bach St. John Passion Performance

     Our local newspapers chose not to review this concert, it seems.  I, at least, have not seen one and this surprises me as I thought they would want to document Jane Glover's WSO evening.
     From my perspective I was happy to have performed the "wohin" section in Aria No. 24 and come out of it unscathed.  I was quite exhilarated by the fact that I did not miss a single one nor did I add in any extra "wohins".  I feel I could take this show on the road, so if you need a Wohinner I'm your alto.   
     In Chorus No. 23 "Wir haben keinen Konig" my companion and I were the only ones to come in on time singing out the "WIR" but to our chagrin no one else came in so it looked like we were wrong.  I was relieved when a tenor approached me after the concert to say, "you know you were right on that entry in No. 24, I didn't come in since she didn't look up at the choir"  He was right about that, the conductor did not cue us for this entry as she had been doing for all the others but I still did not appreciate being left high and dry in front of all those people singing "WIR" as a duet. 
     Backstage, prior to concert, Ms. Glover came to address the choir which not all conductors do.  She said she knew she had not paid us much attention in the dress rehearsal and that was because we were actually quite good and she had other things to attend to.  However, she wanted us to be
1.  more sneering in "sei gegrusset"
2. more ugly in Kreuzige
3. more personal in the Chorales
4.  more lawyer-like in the Hohenpriester choruses

     I think the choir managed to fulfill all 4 requests but since there is not the benefit of a post mortem with her I cannot be sure. 
   The Concert Hall was not sold out and this was a bit of a downer when we first get out there and saw the empty seats but once the orchestra began to weave the magic of the opening chorus started I forgot about that.

     I am not a musician so my opinion will not mean much but I thought the continuo was so well done by our principal cellist, Yuri Hooker, and the oboe playing was absolutely divine.  Principal oboist, Bede Hanley was sitting within arm's reach of me and I was basking in the sound. 
Soloists, Lawrence Wiliford, Christopheren Nomura, Karina Gauvin and German born Eva Vogel all did their parts well.  Although Bach really does not give the solo women much to do, the arias they do sing are gorgeous.    
      So that is another Easter concert season finished.  Advent seems a long way off.

Jane Glover and the St. John's Passion

I have entered Concert Week and I am in the midst of the experience of a lifetime.  I have not sung a St. John's Passion with this much depth before, and this is my 6th experience.  (I had missed one in my previous posting of Bach's St. John's which was 1986.  at my age there is much to forget)
     Last night was our first rehearsal with the great Jane Glover.  With her exacting manner and clear and precise, British accented speech, she was able to shape the Passion in a way we have not experienced before.  She spent most of her time with the Chorales, which is a surprising as there are several large and somewhat difficult choruses in the work, but her emphasis was on shaping the chorales into the monumental human condition statements that they are.  In her opinion one could spend 3 months just learning the chorales.  We were to feel the guilt of our sins and the injustice of an innocent going to die for them and then "tell me about that, but privately."   Prior to each Chorale, and there are 11 she would say, "I invite you to put yourself in it."
      One of several shaping tools is dynamics and here she tried to wean us off of our habitual "mezzo quel que chose" as she put it.    We most definitely have to work on our pianos and pianissimos, although somewhat difficult with our 90+ singers.  I encourage you to listen to this beautiful example of a Bach Chorale, just so you know how achingly beautiful a Bach chorale from this Passion can be. 
      We made so many markings last night that I am not sure I will be able to keep my seatmate, who was absent, up to speed with all we learned last night.  We did not rehearse the "wohin" movement, as several from our Nonette were missing.  We will tackle it tonight and I am most nervous about it as well as eager, since I look forward to her further revelations on the piece. I am comforted by the fact that she herself admitted it is a difficult piece to get right.
     She is the third revelation of St. John's telling of the suffering of Christ.  The first being St. John himself who wrote down this powerful narrative, then Bach who set it to the most glorious music thereby richly enhancing the story and now Jane Glover who has added further revelation by her detailed and impassioned immersion into the text. 
     Prior to an instruction we were sometimes referred to as "my friends" which softens us up for all her demands.  I am actually thrilled by all the demands, it feels good to be worked so hard and expectations set so high.  It was thrilling.  There is nothing blase about the Crucifixion story and there was nothing casual about her approach to it. 
    Then there was the revelation of a clearer separation between the crowd choruses shouting "crucify, crucify" and the choruses of the high priests, for example, "Schreibe nicht".    Now the music Bach wrote for each does automatically denote a difference since in the Schreibe Nicht we are accompanied by flutes which don't really suggest a bloodthirsty crowd and fits the higher learned priests but when the choir treats both as aggressive rabble rousing choruses the lines between the crowds and priests are blurred. Yet this is often how it is done and never has someone provided such a clear image as to how this chorus is to be sung.  Ms Glover asked us to sing it "lawyer-like", we are the rational  people telling Pilate, "listen don't write He is the King of the Jews, but rather He SAID, he is king of  the Jews".   Somehow it is so satisfying to be able to communicate this attitude with one's singing voice, and then to also be able to be the angry mob shouting, "Not this one, rather Barabam". 
     We will back to rehearsing with Ms. Glover tonight and will do our best to bring some shape to our phrases, clarity to our words, and varied dynamics instead of our "mezzo quel que chose" .  Our homework was to read the words of all the chorales and internalize them.  She urged us by saying,  "I would rather you sang some wrong notes than not mean these words you are singing."