Advent 2024 - Magnificat

This Advent I am singing with a new choir in town - SOLI DEO GLORIA. What is amazing about this choir is that anyone who has a desire to sing Oratorio music can join, no experience necessary. This group sings with joy and passion of the amateur; that is doing it for the love of the art form and not as a job. I think you will be able to sense this at our performance December 1st!

We are performing 2 works that work together well thematically and span the centuries. First is Bach, Cantata 142 Uns ist ein Kind Geboren which proclaims the baby who will save us all has been born. There are beautiful arias, a great orchestral opening movement and 3 choral movements. Short and joyous and so very Bach - it will snag you immediately and pull you along all the runs and trills - completely exhilirating! Then will come Rutter's Magnificat. Opposite to Bach. First of all, unlike Bach, Rutter is a living composer and British. Though both are fans of the accidental and both have settings of the Magnificat you will never mix up the two. Bach has been my friend since I was a little girl and so before the orchestra has completed the first bar I am already in love. Rutter is a composer I have only learned to sing as an adult and I find all his time signature changes and occasional dissoance difficult to sing. I have to work so much harder at it - yes, as I mentioned - amateur choir. Still all the rehearsals have paid off and I have come to appreciate this piece very much. I am impressed with Rutter's very deliberate matching of music and text. First of all what is Magnificat? It comes from the opening lines of Mary's joyful prayer upon hearing the news that she is the to be the Mother of God's son. She begins, "My Soul doth Magnnify the Lord" How this newly pregnant teenager could rejoice instead of lament is one of the biblical mysteries. In Rutter's musical setting of Mary's words you will find incredible word painting. Mvt. 1 - My soul doth magnify the Lord: and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the lowlineess of his hand-maiden: for behold, from henceforth All generations shall call me blessed Although we will sing this in latin you will immediately experience the exuberant joy in the opening lines, the lines about the lowly hand maiden will be subdued and beautiful. The music beautifully matches the text throughout this work. In mvt 5 you will immediately tell when the haughty are being scattered by our rapidly descending phrases followed then by the gently raising up phrases as the humble are being exalted. Wow, Mr. Rutter, such a perfect marriage of music and text! In the 6th moement comes the healing balm of the phrase "Suscepit Israel puerum suum" - (God in his mercy has helped his servant Israel.( I am close to tears when singing this line or when the soloist sings it, oh yes, there is a beautiful soprao solo in this piece, as there should be! Whoever heard of Mary being an alto? Marni Enns sings these lines beautifully! She alone is worth the price of admission. When you are sitting in the pews you will find your own striking examples of words and music working together to communicate the message of a young teen-age girl's outpourings so many years ago. Though the choir is ameteur the conductor, orchestra and soloists are not. Yuri Klaz will conduct the dynamic orchestra and soloists and weave us choristers into the mix with his magic baton. Come and experience the joy!

Passion Performance Preparation

This post is a glimpse into how I prepare for a performance during passion season. Tonight the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir is performing two beautiful works with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. They are Te Deum by Dvorak and Brahms' Requiem. I started the day by mixing up my Paska dough while listening to Bach passion chorales. The Paska receipe comes from Irmgrad Baerg, beautiful accomplished pianist who I admire greatly. While the dough rises I spend 20 minutes on the treadmill while simultaneous watching a Te Deum performance on youtube, link above, and singing along, confirming that I do have it memorized - hooray!

This is my first time singing this work, in fact prior to rehearsals I had not even heard it. I must say it is a beautiful composition ; very joyful! Our performance is very much enhanced by soloists Lara Ciekiewicz and Greg Dahl. I have heard them both perform many times and performed other works with them and they add a lot of sparkle and pizazz! Lara is always generous with praise for the choir which aids in our performance. We especially need this type of endorsement as our conductor, Yuri Klaz, is not really that impressed with us, having numerous complaints about our intonation, timing and dynamics. "A right note at the wrong time is a wrong note" It may interest you to know that a wrong note at the right time is also a wrong note. Since his visage is more glowering than glowing when he looks upon us from his podium, we are lapping up any praise we can from soloists and orchestra to keep us going. Personally, I have prepped by using www.cyberbass.com in the initial stages for the Te Deum and when that is mastered I sang along with the video recording above and my score, to eventually be doing it sans score. Of course, what one can manage in one's own living room, fortified by red wine, is not always replicated on the stage with the orchestra blasting all their insturments. The altos are placed very closely behind the trumpets and trombones which can be quite distracting at times, what with all the blasting and saliva. Also they are a rather jocular group telling jokes between blares. For Brahms I did not need to prep with cyberbass or recordings because it is a work I am very familiar with. I did however have to spend time doing excercises that gradually crescendo and descrescendo. Practically every bar of this Requiem has a crescendo and descrendo in it - which one must pay attention to but we fail at this over and over again. During rehearsals many of us just blast right through 2 bars, then go subito piano. It is difficult to maintian this constant rise and fall but it is what Brahms is all about. At last night's dress rehearsal I think we mostly managed this correctly. When you come tonight I would be interested to hear your feedback on this point. One of the highlights is to see how much our conductor basks on the podium to the sounds coming from the orchestra. There is a beautiful dynamic between orchestra and Yuri that is satisfying to watch. He is really in his element jabbing his baton and casting magic spells. The musicians are showing him respect and a spirit of collegiality abounds. This is far from always the case and it is thrilling when it happens!

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!

All Good Things 3 Times!

Two contrasting pieces, two French composers, two conductors, add in one orchestra and the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir, in one French cathedral and you have a wonderfully interesting week!

Two composers and their contrasting pieces are Francis Poulenc's Gloria, at once playful and stirring and Faure's melodious long-lined Requiem.  Monsieur Poulenc's score has some French cinema / restaurant style music coming from the orchestra.  It was composed in 1959.  At the first rehearsal I thought I would never be performance ready as the musical lines which are playful in performance are just unpredictable accidents in rehearsal.

Francis Poulenc

As an amateur singer, a score full of accidentals and multiple time signatures like this one just makes me fearful!  With some one- finger keyboard pounding at home and time spent with my best friend, www.cyberbass.com, I came to be able to playfully hum all the movements from the Gloria while going about my day.  It really is in my ear, head and heart now.
 In movement 5 I couldn't help feeling that I was walking in Paris at night, the Notre Dame Cathederal near me, crepe stands around the corner, a cabaret in sight and Edith Piaf singing in my ear.  As an overtrack to that comes the soprano plaintively calling "Domine Deus"  (Lord God) "Qui tolis pecata mundi"(who takes away the sins of the world)  Here in the French night, plaintively and uncertainly calling out for redemption.  It haunts me.  I challenge you to listen to the opening bars of movement 5 and see if you are not immediately brought to Paris. Other of Poulenc's movements, such as the 2nd are light and playful, with the composer having imagined monks playing football (soccer).  The light footwork, passing back and forth, and the joy of the game are evident.
Our soprano for this concert was Lara Ciekiweicz.  Lara has a dramatic singing style which immediately draws in the audience.  Lara has a charming practice of sending a card on opening night to the choirs she works with.  I find this to be a nice touch.  In her earlier life, before fame, she was a chorister alongside me with the Mennonite Festival Chorus.

Lara Ciekiewicz

Gabriel Faure  

The second half of the concert was the melodious and comforting Faure Requiem.  The popular Pie Jesu movement is perhaps the best known and is only soprano soloist and orchestra. Faure did write a beautiful requiem here but he really did not give much for the alto chorister to do, and there is no alto soloist either. In  2 out of 7 movements I was forced to stand there, score in hand and mouth closed for practically the whole piece.  In the Sanctus the altos sing only the last two bars, literally!!!!  Does he have unresolved issues with an alto and this is his way of dealing with them?   I don't get it!  Why make us stand there while the sopranos and the men sound so beautiful around us, clearly stating, ALTOS ARE NOT NEEDED and then at the last Sanctus, giving us one note to sing just to round out the chord.  HUMPFF!

The altos do have a nice duet with the tenors in Movement 2, that is, it could have been nice, but as our conductor told us after the first two performances, "Altos you are having trouble with intonation, well, sorry but you are flat, I have to say it, sorry."  Not exactly the thing you want to hear.  I am sure not much changed at the 3rd and last performance but our conductor was much too kind to tell us this.  Maestro Klaz has a firm practice of only stating the positive, once there is nothing left to be done.  He will teach and coax and reprimand right up until the last possible  moment of the last performance but once it is done, he has left it all on the stage and will insist that you were absolutely lovely!

So the very odd thing about this concert is that we performed it 3 times instead of the usual 2 and that we had 2 performance conductors.  This, I have never experienced.  The two conductors, Alexander Mickelthwate and Yuri Klaz  are quite different.  This was Alexander's last choral piece as WSO conductor and most likely the last time I will ever work with him.  Although he is a very pleasant man and not demanding of the choir, he is seriously lacking a downbeat and for this reason I am always nervous when performing with him the last 12 years.   In fact at the second performance the second movement, yes the one where the altos were flat, he was so seriously off the rails that the tenors, orchestra, and altos were all in different parts of the score.  So, this second performance was on a Saturday night, but earlier that same day we had a dress rehearsal with the other conductor, Yuri Klaz, whose tempos were quite different from Alexander's and whose conducting style is so much clearer.  It is a challenge to  rehearse so thoroughly with director 2 but perform a few hours later with director 1, then the next afternoon you are back with 2.   I heard from many choristers that they wish Alexander had attended the third performance as he would have heard a more passionate and much more accurate rendition of the concert.  There was no uncertainty on entries or endings at this last performance which was a big contrast to the other two.
Lara was the soprano soloist for the Faure and Matthew Pauls, the baritone.

All 3 concerts were sold out and this is a thrill to a performer!

Schubert and Brahms

Franz Schubert

This month I was able to perform two pieces from the romantic period in one concert with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Yuri Klaz.
Klaz is primarily a choral conductor but has conducted the WSO on several occasions. 
It was heartwarming for this chorister to see that the musicians behaved as though they had respect for Yuri's musical ideas and a genuine warmth seemed to emanate between the orchestra and conductor. 
I have seen many conductors mount the podium and gaze out over this orchestra, I have seen more than one wilt and be meekly led by the concert mistress herself.  On the other hand  I have shaken in my boots as tongue lashings occurred from podium to timpani and condescending remarks were hissed out at various instrumental sections.
The rehearsals for this concert had none of that.  Respect for the music and one another was the hallmark of these rehearsals.  Instruction and response seemed natural.
This conductor even handled the union master's annoying penchant for stopping rehearsals at just the wrong time with good humour.

Even if this respectful relationship had not been the case I feel the music would have smoothed over any difficulties. 

The glorious pieces we performed, the we being the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir, are not that often performed here in Winnipeg, and in fact it was my first time for either piece!  Given my age it may also be the last, which is truly a sad thought!

We sang the Brahms' Nanie and Schubert's Mass in Eflat.  Recordings of the pieces are linked to their titles.  The Brahms piece is a secular piece written for the funeral of a friend.  The text is a Friedrich Schiller poem. (same poet who wrote the Ode to Joy text)   It is written and was performed in the German language but here is the English translation of the text.

Even the beautiful must perish! That which overcomes gods and men

Moves not the armored heart of the Stygian Zeus.

Only once did love come to soften the Lord of the Shadows,

And just at the threshold he sternly took back his gift.

Neither can Aphrodite heal the wounds of the beautiful youth

That the boar had savagely torn in his delicate body.

Nor can the deathless mother rescue the divine hero

When, at the Scaean gate now falling, he fulfills his fate.

But she ascends from the sea with all the daughters of Nereus,

And she raises a plaint here for her glorious son.

Behold! The gods weep, all the goddesses weep,

That the beautiful perishes, that the most perfect passes away.

But a lament on the lips of loved ones is glorious,

For the ignoble goes down to Orcus in silence.

Just reading the text I can hear that it was meant for Brahms!

 

The Schubert mass, his last one, and in fact he died before it was first performed, is much more difficult to sing than his earlier ones.  I was quite surprised when I came to them that the fugues required a fair bit of work and were  trickier than one would expect of Schubert.  This made rehearsals fun, and provided great satisfaction when they appeared light and fresh at performance time - at least I hope so.
Schubert did not write much for the soloists to do.  He gave them only quartet /trio work and usually meshed them into a choral piece.  This meant that neither my voice nor body received much of a rest during performance, as there were no arias where a chorister could rest up!

The Philharmonic choir, most notably the alto section, was very welcoming to associate singers and I appreciate them for it.  I have been singing as an associate with this choir since 1980.  Back then they were known as The Winnipeg Symphony Philharmonic Choir and had their rehearsals at the concert hall with a grand piano.  Now they rehearse in a crowded high school theatre with an electronic keyboard and yet manage to yield good results!  Bravo!

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.

Elijah Huge Success!

Gregory Dahl

I have forgotten to post that the Elijah Concert was a huge success!  Sold out house!  The soprano, Tracy Dahl, was sparkling and sang with such drama one felt as though we were in an opera!  The tenor, Kurt Lehmann, sang with such lyricism and strong diction one felt proud to be part of anything he was in, Kirsten Schellenberg, alto, was solid as always, the boy soprano, Anton Sokalski (son of Tracy Dahl) was pure and divine, but the ELIJAH, who I almost forgot was Gregory Dahl, as it seemed the prophet had appeard amongst us - albeit in a tux.   Mr. Dahl was ELIJAH -" Thou art Elijah" I almost shouted at him, and watched him carefully at the post concert reception to see when the fiery chariots would take him away to heaven! 
Our conductor, Yuri Klaz, was so full of passion it was oozing out all over the place.  He did an excellent job at weaving the orchestra, soloists and choir together to tell this very dramatic story.  The venue, was a cathedral, so it offered the audience a much more intimate feeling than had it been performed in a concert hall.  I think this led to the excitement in the air.  As choristers, we could also see the faces of the audience and they fed so much emotion back to us that one could not help but get into the character we were to be playing at any given time.  Yuri Hooker's solo cello line in the "It is enough" bass solo, was so beautiful that I wished I were in the audience and could allow myself to be swallowed up in it instead of having to remain somewhat alert for performance.
A memorable line from our conductor at our last minute rehearsal was, "Altos, you are watching me and yet you are behind the sopranos."    To myself I thought, "Well, obviously the sopranos must be ahead of your beat."  I of course, said nothing, and feeling duly chastised I tried to remember to push the tempo throughout performance and I think all went well.  

Elijah!

Elijah,was a famous prophet and a wonder-worker in the northern kingdom of Israel^[3] during the reign of Ahab (9th century BC), according to the Biblical Books of Kings as well as the Qur'an. According to the Books of Kings, Elijah defended the worship of Yahweh over that of the Phoenician god Baal; he raised the dead, brought fire down from the sky, and was taken up in a whirlwind (either accompanied by a chariot and horses of flame or riding in it).^[4] In the Book of Malachi, Elijah's return is prophesied "before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord,"^[5] making him a harbinger of the Messiah and the eschaton in various faiths that revere the Hebrew Bible. Derivative references to Elijah appear in the Talmud, Mishnah, the New Testament, and the Qur'an.
In Judaism, Elijah's name is invoked at the weekly Havdalah ritual that marks the end of Shabbat, and Elijah is invoked in other Jewish customs, among them the Passover seder and the Brit milah (ritual circumcision). He appears in numerous stories and references in the Haggadah and rabbinic literature, including the Babylonian Talmud.
In Christianity, the New Testament describes how both Jesus and John the Baptist are compared with Elijah, and on some occasions, thought by some to be manifestations of Elijah, and Elijah appears with Moses during the Transfiguration of Jesus.
In Islam, the Qur'an describes Elijah as a great and righteous prophet of God, and one who powerfully preached against the worship of Ba'al.

(the above is re printed from Wikipedia and I can't believe the amount of hyper texting that is going on here!)

So we now know that Elijah is a major prophet with great impact.  It is this story that Mendelssohn sets to music and this story that will be performed by the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir and members of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra  under the direction of Yuri Klaz for their 90th Anniversary Gala - a major event in itself!
I have read that it is often performed in English speaking countries and it was first performed in England and became very popular there but I cannot say that my city of Winnipeg has been a frequent Elijah performer.  I have heard it only twice here and have never performed it myself.  I am enjoying learning a new work and look forward to the Feb. 24 performance. 
Like in Bach's Passions the chorus gets to act out the parts of "the crowd" so in the famous battle between Jehovah and Ba'al it is the chorus who cries out, "Ba'al we cry to thee, Ba'al we cry to thee, hear and answer us!  Hear and Answer!  This can feel hokey in rehearsals if you are not quite into it but once it is put together with soloists and orchestra I am sure we will be in the right mood to cry out to our Ba'al begging for hm to show himself!  Speaking of soloists, they will be Tracy Dahl, Kirsten Schellenberg, Kurt Lehman, and Greg Dahl.
Other portions are a joy to rehearse and I can get into the mood for them even in rehearsal  These are the comforting pieces such as, "He Watches Over Israel",  "He That Shall Endure to the End", and "Lift thine Eyes"
The copies we are using are old and ragged so that one can frequently hear choristers whispering,"Oh, %hit" as half of their pages land on the floor.  So on the "To Do" list this week is repair my copy so no more bending over to retrieve lost pages, finish writing in the bar numbers, and rehearse a few of the trickier parts so I will be completely ready to go by the next rehearsal.  In addition to being ragged our scores also have German and English text, and not written in the most clear manner, so you will have choristers singing out "Send" while that may look like an English work it is actually part of the German text so don't sing it!  Sometimes your voice part will only have the German and you have to look up or down to another voice part to get your lyrics.  I want to go over this at home this week too so that I can sing confidently from now on.

It is a treat to sing with the Philharmonic choir because there is no pressure there for me to lead the section and in fact there are so many others on whom I am leaning. 

Fear of Judgement

Rehearsing the Beethoven Mass in C Major with the First Mennonite Church Choir has not gone as well as expected.  There seem to be many trouble spots.  This is surprising since this choir has mastered more difficult works, like Bach's St. John's Passion and Brahms Requiem better than this. 

I have had my own pet difficult spot and it has been the syncopated entry of the word Judicare which occurs in the Credo movement.  One look at my score will show you the trouble I have had.  First there is the circled note which I marked early on telling me to please look at this area.  Then there is the marked counting from the two bars preceding the entry.  I don't recall having had trouble with this entry last time I sang it so I must have had stronger counters sitting near me that just led me along.  
It seems the more pencil marks I make the more anxiety I get as this section approaches.  The more I count the more confused I am.

Last rehearsal my conductor saved me. Yuri put down his baton and said, "Just stop counting.  Listen to the orchestra and when they are done their 3 chords, gasp in fear of judgement and sing"  He demonstrated this with a loud quick breath and eyes open wide.   Now, Judicare means judgment and it appears Beethoven deliberately placed the word in this syncopated style where the judgement comes upon us unexpectedly.   Since I also live in fear of judgement at this point in the movement it is easy for me now to listen to the orchestra, gasp out my fear by a quick sharp intake of breath and sing out "judicare".  After our conductor's demonstration the choir tried again, and lo and behold we all came in at the correct time.  It seems a fear of judgement is something we can relate to.

I am sure this is not a problem for most choirs but for us Mennonites syncopation is unnatural.  We can sing out a Bach Choral in the steady style of kneading bread but ask as to venture into an area that might lead to dancing and we just can't do it.  Maybe that's why I didn't have a problem with it the last time I sang this.  That choir didn't have the word Mennonite in its name. 

"Oh, ya, I know him."

     An interesting fact about choral conductors is that while a chorister gets to know the conductor and feel connected to him a conductor cannot be connected to the individual chorister, only to the choir as a whole.  For example, I go around saying I have worked with Jane Glover and Bramwell Tovey, and Boris Brott and I feel like I have an acquaintance with them, but does Maestro Brott ever tell his buddies, "Did you know I worked with Lori in Winnipeg?"  How many times do you think Bramwell Tovey has told his dinner companion, "Lori and I have done the Beethoven's 9th several times."  The truth of the matter is that none of these conductors would  know me if they tripped over me on their way down the concert hall stairs.
      Of course, in smaller choirs like the church choir your conductor can choose to get to know you and your rehearsal conductor for the visiting superstar conductor may also be someone who knows his individual chorister, but even then, he is working with the choir not the singer.  The sound he is shaping is the choirs.

Bramwell Tovey

     I thought I would share a bit about these conductors I "know".  Bramwell Tovey, for example, is the director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.  When he was the conductor of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra I worked with him several times.  Together we did the Beethoven's 9th twice (and I was pregnant both times so when I was called up to do the 9th a third time I thought, "Oh no, am I pregnant again?)  I have also sung the Sea Symphony with him.  Bramwell, oh of course I am on first name basis with this conductor, is an easy conductor to work with.  He is wonderfully animated and relates humorous anecdotes with his wonderful English accent accent and vocabulary. He tells stories of his school days in England, his Mennonite in-laws, and his children, all with such wonderful warmth.  When I have worked with him as part of a Mennonite choir he will even use some low-german words which are incomprehensible when spoken with an english accent, but the attempt is endearing nontheless.  (How can I not feel like I know him when he reveals so much of himself?)   His whole body is involved in all he tells.  I so loved the time he was rehearsing the Verdi Requiem with the Mennonite Festival Chorus and in the Dies Irae section he was trying to get us to sing the "Quantus tremor est futurus, quando judex est venturus" in a diabolical whisper.  He hunched his back, curled his fingers bringing his hands up near his face, bent his knees and began to tip toe towards us, hissing "Quantus tremor est futurus..."  That evil troll image pops into my head every time I hear or sing that phrase in the Verdi. 

       Boris Brott was also somewhat playful.  I worked with him for the locally infamous 500 voice Handel's Messiah in the 1980's at the, now torn down, Winnipeg Arena.  This performance was known more for the squeaky bleacher seats every time the choir rose and sat than for the singing.  He was easy to follow, had an animated face and took the whole thing as a lark.  I don't remember him taking one part of text seriously and when we sang "All we Like Sheep" he said it reminded him of the Woody Allen movie,  Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex  where it seems some people do like sheep.

 Then there was Andrey Boreyko with whom I have worked on several pieces.  We (yes, "we", just ask him) worked on Brahms Requiem, Arvo Pärt's  Cecilia, vergine romana,Patrick Carrabré  Creation Stories, Beethoven's 9th,  Dvorak's Stabat Mater and probably more that I can't recollect.  Boreyko was more god than human.  He glided to the podium, the respect coming to him from the orchestra was palpable, he spoke in a German accent and we hung on his every soft word.  He was demanding but made us eager to please.  As you would expect from a god, he was not revealing.
      It is impossible for me to imagine he would have an every-day life to talk about.  I cannot picture him going shopping or mowing the lawn.  If I were to picture him off the podium it would be in black turtleneck sweater, cigarette in hand, brandy glass on table, poring over scores. and periodically pushing his hair off his face.  He is not of our world, and the passion he brings for the music is overpowering. Working with him ranks in the top of my choral experiences.  After a performance with him one feels as though they have been on a journey to another world and have returned shaken to the core and emotionally spent.
     However, he can be very cutting in his remarks.  I remember shaking on my riser as, during a rehearsal of Stabat Mater by Dvorak, Boreyko lambasted the timpani player accusing him of having arrived without a sense of rhythm when he couldn't mimic a heartbeat. For many uncomfortable minutes the poor sod had to pound it out and then be met with a withering look from Boreyko. When Boreyko looks at you his gaze cuts right through you, leaving one quite weak kneed, for better or worse.

 Maximiano Valdes

    The opposite is true of the Chilean conductor Maximiano Valdés.  He most certainly thinks he is God but he is the only major conductor I have worked with who failed to move me at all.  He gave me nothing.  From him I learned that it is extreme torture to sing with someone who is not exuding anything.  He was robotic and uninspiring and it was such a great disappointment as he came with such an impressive discography.  When we met him for the first time I thought maybe he was sick and that by dress rehearsal he would give us something.  Nothing.  I worked and worked during the performance but felt nothing.  The performance was utterly unsatisfying.  This was sad as the work we sang, Mozart's Requiem, is one of my favourites but Maestro Valdes was so cold that even Mozart could not penetrate him.  This performance was the first and last one where I have cried tears of disappointment.

Alexander Mickelthwate

     The major conductor I work with the most these days is Alexander Mickelthwate who is a look alike to Kevin Bacon.  He is a complete delight to work with and together (ha, ha) we have performed Beethoven/s 9th, Beethoven's Choral Fantasia, Beethoven's Mass in C, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Verdi's Requiem, Haydn's Creation, Brahms Requiem.  He speaks to us with an exquisite soft German accent.  He is complimentary and not very demanding of the chorus.  He is tiny and boyish as he perches on the podium like a sprite and I always have the distinct feeling that I am being led by Peter Pan. He is exuberant and bouncy during performance and makes the whole experience enjoyable!  My most memorable Mickelthwate moment is that he gave in to a rehearsal conductor.  In my experience the performance conductor always over rules the rehearsal conductor.  The general rule is that anything you may have rehearsed in the lead up weeks can be changed the first time the performance conductor meets you.  During the Verdi Requiem there are 7 bars that the altos love to sing.  They occur near the end of the piece when they interrupt a Soprano soloist and steal the show by singing in operatic fashion, on a C above middle C,  all by themselves, 'LIBERA ME DOMINE DE MORTE AETERNA IN DIE ILLA TREMENDA".  This is how we rehearsed it, this is how we wanted to do it.  Imagine how our hearts sank when at rehearsal with orchestra Alexander tells the Altos to just sneak in quietly , hardly noticeable.  What?  Hardly noticeable?"  That is what we have been doing our whole lives,  we can do that but surely not here, not in these 7 bars when we are so longing to shine.  Of course, being choristers and not divas, we dutifully whispered our Libera Me.   When leaving the rehearsal hall an alto friend and I were confronted by Yuri Klaz, our rehearsal conductor, who furrowed his brow and spat out, "What happened to you Altos?"
 "Just doing what the Maestro instructed", I said. 
"No,  no", he shook his head, " this cannot be." 
Just then Mickelthwate appeared and with score in hand Klaz attacked him and I swept out the door.     
     At dress rehearsal the next day I could have shouted for joy when the instructions from the podium were, "Okay, altos sing it like you rehearsed it!"
    
     Other major conductors I have worked with have been discussed in older postings here on this Blog.  Jane Glover and Noel Edison.  Edison in the Handel's Messiah posting and Glover in the posting called Jane Glover and the St. John's Passion.

Mendelssohn ist Vergangen

The choir of First Mennonite Church in Winnipeg has completed their Mendelssohn Symphony No. 2 Lobgesang and is on a high!  The performance went well, it was majestic, and emotional.  The orchestra was superb. 
I am so grateful that in 2011, when so many local Mennonite churches no longer have a choir, our choir can continue to perform these wonderful works.  The Lobgesang, being new to all of us in the choir, was a risky and unconventional choice for Good Friday but we did it justice.
      There were some dramatics leading up to Good Friday's performance.  On Wednesday the soprano soloist called our conductor, Yuri Klaz (pictured above), to say she had no voice.  Hmm , what to do?  Yuri calls our de facto General Manager, but who in fact is a very dedicated volunteer who pulls these concerts together with rarely any recognition, (and her name is INGRID.)who manages to fly in a gifted soprano from Montreal who has ties to our congregation, Ellen Wieser who does an admirable job of rescuing us at this late hour.   
     Our conductor was visibly emotional at the post-concert reception and was grateful to the choir for the concert's success.  The post-concert high continues.