CORONA COVID-19 CHORAL CHRISTMAS

 

What a disappointment.  Christmas 2020 was to be a high choral point, booked to perform Bach's Christmas Oratorio with Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra players and the vibrant Ms. Brenneman at baton.  Cancelled.  Bah Humbug!

Instead I sang some Christmas Carols in my closet into my iphone microphone and sent them off to my church conductor at First Mennonite, where he tried to mix this and 20 other tracks into a whole for the Christmas eve church candle light service.  When one is doing their performance singing alone in the closet one needs to keep the end result in mind and imagine fellow singers around the city doing likewise, or else it is just too depressing.

This Christmas Eve day, I could not travel to the country to spend the day with my in-laws so I did this:

Brought my blue Baerenreiter score to the treadmill, put on this performance of Bach's Christmas Oratorio and proceeded to walk and sing.   Usually I watch Karajan and his impressive sing- from- memory choirs but this choir from Lucerne was holding the same score I was so they made me feel welcome.  Benefits of this type of performance over traditional one.

1.  Lack of breath control?  "Uh, Maestro, I am on a treadmill don't you know?"

2.  I was able to give the bass soloist support during Grosser Herr, Starker Konig without the conductor kicking me off the stage.  In fact, I am pretty sure he gave a nod of approval.  But it was hard to tell with sweat in my eye.

3.  Can perform the Jauchzet Frolocket whilst looking at the joyous faces of my fellow choristers!  Very fun!  

4.  Notice that the women, demurely have their scores open on their laps during arias while the men have them closed, thumbs in position and bright blue blasting from their laps. Classic.

5. Goes without saying that everyone in attendance loved my renditions of Bereite dich Zion and Schlafe mein Suesser with the support of the Swiss soloist on the screen of course. 

6. Doo-Doo- ed the first violin parts during introductions without consequence, although the guy in First Chair did raise his head and look around for a second, he did not give me the icy stare I would expect from the players here. 

Other musings while walking and singing:

When the flute began to usher the shepherds down their hills I missed seeing WSO's Jan, he of the great hair, rising from his chair,  Instead in Lucerne it was a woman around my age.  

Soprano soloist sang from the back balcony for her little part in Teil II and does not come to stage at all until Teil III  She doesn't sing in Teil 1.  Thanks Bach, for giving the alto soloist all the good part in this piece!  Even on my basement stage, a soprano I am not.

It was an ok way to have a choral performance experience but it was just one notch better than nothing.

Social Distancing and the Choral Life

This was a requiem season like no other in my choral life.  Due to health directives issued in response to the COVID-19 virus, it was a concert free zone.  That very condition requires a requiem of its' own.  Choirs have attempted ways to carry on in the new environment. I am sure you have seen the laughable attempts to hold a choir rehearsal on Zoom or even sing a simple Happy Birthday.  It doesn't work.
Besides the loss of not being able to rehearse together with others is the loss of concerts I rehearsed for but could not perform. Their dates passing without the requisite concert week marathon rehearsals preceding them and no dressing in performance wear meeting backstage in nervous anticipation.  Among these were Berlioz Messe, Beethoven Mass, Dvorak Te Deum all with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, a collaboration I treasure.  In addition was the much anticipated and so beloved Brahms Requiem with the First Mennonite Church Choir.
Some of these concerts are cancelled, some postponed.

One would think I had used my rehearsal free evenings to look at the scores and prepare for postponed concerts but one would be wrong.  The singing I have done, much too loudly, has been belting out tunes with Elton John and ABBA and I do a pretty good rendition of Brown-Eyed Girl.
My concert scores have remained closed receiving only glares as I pass them by.

Then came the unexpected.  My work-life mandated a Wellness Morning as part of a professional development day.  We were to watch videos sent by our boss, reflect on them, and choose a wellness activity in a mindful purposeful way.  This is easier said than done.  What to do?  Can't go for a manicure or a massage.  Could go for a walk but this is part of my daily routine already.  A helpful sister suggested I watch Judge Judy since hearing her call out, "idiot" can sometimes be as satisfying as a massage.  I realized that I would rather spend my mornings working than relaxing.  I am a work first, then relax sort of person.
In the midst of the stress of deciding how to practice wellness Haydn and Brahms called out to me and I got them off the shelf.  I laid out some of the scores of music I will, hopefully be performing in the next concert season.

Beethoven called out the loudest so he and I headed down to the TV where I pulled up a performance of the Mass in C.  This was not as easy as it sounds.  I am fussy.  I wanted one where I could watch the singers and the conductor, and I wanted them to be good.  Finding none with Herbert van Karajan, my go-to YouTube conductor, I opted for this one out of Germany https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UzITmh5BD0  I usually choose European choirs. The reason being they are most likely to sing without score in hand.  This choir, sadly did not.  Nor did the soloists.  Still I didn't want to waste anymore time finding the "just right" sing along choir.  

As the opening Kyrie began I became distracted by the treadmill visible from the corner of my eye, so I got on it and proceeded to sing and walk simultaneously.  The treadmill hummed in the wrong key, loudly, and my huffing and puffing did not allow for breath control required in most movements. This was less than ideal for rehearsal purposes, but since the performance of this will be way in the future it sufficed.  

Some pleasant surprises.  In spite of not rehearsing for weeks my vocal range has not suffered and my memory of the piece was solid.  Coming across my various pencil  markings made me smile and I took heed of them:  "tempo" "torturned soul"  "NN" (there are 2 n's in Osanna), the circle around the time signature 12/8 of the Agnus Dei and the ever present arrow pointing up indicating to not sing flat. ( Oh dear, the cardinal sin that requires a blogpost of its own.)  When at last we reached the Dona Nobis pacem, the anguished demands and cries for peace, my soul was moved.  Beethoven was writing this during the Napoleonic wars therefore his cries have gravitas.

After the applause and the soloists and conductor had taken their bows I got off the treadmill feeling grateful to Beethoven and all performers who have kept his music alive over the years.

Did I derive meaning from choral music without my choir?  yes.  Is it enough?  No.  I yearn to gather with fellow choristers and look forward to the first post COVID-19 rehearsal.  What a day of rejoicing that will be!

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!

Messiah 2017

G. F. Handel

This year is the Messiah that I almost didn't perform.  Some would say that is hardly a sad thing, but this chorister has yet to tire of performing Handel's great oratorio.  This great composition never languished in dust, as Julian Pellicano mentioned in his pre-concert talk to the audience, but was performed the year it was composed (1741) and every year after that.  I am thrilled to perform it over and over again. (although I came on the scene a few years after composition)

Imagine then, when earlier this year I scanned over the Winnipeg Symphony Season catalogue and found that listed under Messiah was WSO Chorus - a choir I was not a member of nor had ever heard of.  I went into panic mode!  Who was this choir?  Who was the conductor?  Why were the usual suspects (Winnipeg Philharmonic and Mennonite Festival Chorus)  taken off of this gig?
I messaged the WSO executive director who replied that the board was just looking at different choirs.  "yes", I anxiously replied, "a change can be good but who is this WSO Chorus?  It is their name that scares me!!  It sounds like if you ever want to sing with the WSO again you best be part of this choir."  To this there was no reply.

A few weeks later a friend texted me an image of their TV screen and on it were the words WSO Chorus auditions and an email address.

You can bet I emailed that very minute hoping to get in on my resume alone.  This group would have none of that and rather insisted I send in an audition.  They wanted to hear two choruses from Messiah.  Two from an approved list of 3.  Oh brother.  By now it was summer and my voice was in relaxed mode.  Having not sung for weeks I felt quite out of shape, vocally.  I sang around the house for a few days and then proceeded to record myself singing along with a recording.  Now, as my family knows, singing with a recording is what I do best - haha!  I blast out every choral part I can and of course bellow along with the soloists too.  So it was with my audition recording.  Yup - when the chorus was done the bass soloist and I rang out, "Thus saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts" OOPS!  Now what?  Not being very electronically savvy and not wanting to re-sing the piece as this had been my 3rd go that afternoon, I decided to send off the recording with this very embarrassing bit at the end, indicating that I was also auditioning for the bass solo part.
After a few agonizing weeks of waiting I received the joyous news that I had passed the audition and was now a member of the WSO Chorus!  I was elated!

I arrived at the first rehearsal much like a young soccer player arrives at the provincial team's first practice. Happy to have made the cut, but anxious and insecure.  This feeling was palpable in the rehearsal room.  We were competing against each other, scared someone would take our spot, worried we wouldn't measure up.  There was not the usual choral camaraderie.   There were only 2 familiar faces in the room, which was odd considering I have sung in choirs in this city for 4 decades.  The 3 of us were from the Mennonite Festival Chorus which has performed the Messiah with the WSO many times.

The rehearsal conductor, John Wiens, indicated that this was only 70% of the choir and that the rest would come later.  The rest, it turns out, were members of Polycoro, a local elite choir.  This, 70% of second stringers rehearsed 2 or 3 times prior to having the pros join us.  For me the rehearsals were something like this:

first rehearsal:  I cried on the way home because the conductor had indicated, in my general direction, that vibrato was not a welcome sound in his choir. "Well", I thought," I guess I won't be singing in your choir then."  It was like telling a left-footed kicker that no left foot shots were allowed.  Now, I try to produce a straight tone and I know that too much vibrato is awful but I didn't think I was at that stage yet. So now I had two choices, I could quit or I could use his techniques to improve my sound.
After the tears I decided to keep practicing.  I took to heart his advice about balancing the body, opening up space at the back, letting the sound fall out, not worrying about sounding good,..etc. All the things my voice teacher, Diane Berger used to say.

Wiens Warm-up

2nd rehearsal: I thought I had landed in a choral comedy sketch.  John Wiens had us twirling our fingers around our lips then pulling hand back while pointing at ourselves and breathing out and then bringing our pointed finger right back to our lips while breathing in.  Say What?!?  I couldn't decide whether he was genius or idiot.  This was going to be a very different Messiah.  We second stringers were struggling to blend our sound.  In the soprano section was an 11 year old boy, in the tenor section was a woman, there were only 4 basses, among the altos was one old lady (that being myself) and a 16 year old girl.   I was singing about 50% of my capacity in order to blend with the voices around me, many of which had a Broadway musical sound to them, which it seemed is what he wanted.  On this ride home I predicted this choir would never be able to cut through an orchestra.  It is too small, and too weak.

subsequent rehearsals:  Then came the 30%!  And the difference they made was 100%.  Their professional voices were able to coat all of ours, fill in the gaps, and we began to have a blended sound.  I was feeling hopeful.  Voices like Sarah-Jo Kirsh in the soprano section and Sarah Hall in the alto took things up several notches.  John was fussy about voice placement and moved choristers around during rehearsals to get the right sound.  I had read about this technique but never experienced this in action and I enjoyed the process; because in the end I  received  two seatmates with whom I felt I could blend. I decided he was not an idiot.

 Our rehearsal conductor and our performance conductor, sometimes referred to as the real conductor, Julian Pellicano, were much concerned with this Messiah sounding crisp and light.  It had to be a contrast to many classic recordings of the works and to past WSO performances with larger choirs.  They were agreed on this.  Neither of them offered us much by way of passion or talks about their vision of the work except by way of technique. In other productions with the WSO there has been a fair amount of time spent talking about the message of each movement and how the text and music work together.  This was not the case here.   I do not know if this is peculiar to these two conductors or if this is  how one speaks to choirs with so many professional singers.  Still, I did use Ivars Taurins' (a conductor I have written about in past posts)  images of the various movements to help me and give me pleasure.  There were singers in this group who had never sung the Messiah and I wondered what they were using for inspiration.

It was this that gave me a revelation, (yes this old girl is still learning).  Technique and correct interpretation is enough.  The singer does not have to feel emotion to convey emotion.  The singer needs only to convey what the composer and conductor have asked you to do.   If one places the consonant at the exact right moment and crescendos and decrescendos at just the right point in the phrase, with the right notes in the right place emotion will be conveyed.  The singer's feelings are irrelevant.  The performer's attention to and execution of every detail is what counts.  

The soloists in this production were all local singers known and loved by Winnipeggers.  In my unprofessional opinion the soprano, Jane Fingler, sings the way she looks.  Angelic, pure and lovely. I do not know if her voice carried well in that hall.  Dan Peasgood was the counter tenor.  I have  never been a fan of counter tenors as they are competing for my job.  Isn't it enough that they can sing bass or tenor, now they want to go after my notes too?  I once sang in a choir with Dan and he is a very pleasant fellow but he kept singing my notes.  When I sing beside a man I automatically try and  harmonize with him and Dan refused to let me do this; he was always on my notes.  I am clearly not the one to assess his performance as to me, "He was Despised" needs to be sung by an alto. (said the alto) Tenor, P.J. Buchan was stellar and to my ears, far outshone all the others.  He was truly comforting in his opening aria and was brilliant in his "Thou shalt Brrrrrreak Them" later on.  The bass voice was Chris Kornelsen who was fine in his early offerings but in "The Trumpet Shall Sound,"  his voice did not ring out but was rather muffled. 

Julian Pellicano - WSO conductor in residence

  

It surprised me that on the performance podium Julian Pellicano was full of passion, mouthing and sometimes singing along with choir and soloists.  This side of him was not revealed during rehearsals.

By the end of the first performance some barriers in the choir had been broken and more smiles and words were exchanged.

There was no review of the concert in our local paper and I have not spoken with enough critical ears to know how it sounded in the hall but I enjoyed the view and the sound from my vantage point.  I am fairly sure it is the best soprano section I have every sung with.  They were able to beautifully sing high G's as mezzo piano which very few choirs can do.   I came away from this Messiah thrilled to have been able to sing with such fine singers, gratified that I had tried new vocal techniques, warmed by Handel's music and message, and grateful to perform with the huge talent that is WSO. 

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!