A Musical Weekend

On Saturday, the Stuart Singers had their "Fun Day" - four hours of sponsored singing which involved maybe 80 minutes of choral stuff split into five sessions, interspersed with solos, duets and various other ensembles comprised of choir members. I sang Sullivan's "The Lost Chord" (which I have always loved) as my solo, did Irving Berlin's "We're a couple of Swells" as a duet, took part in an octet and had a walk on part in a duet from "Chicago". Gill helped man (woman?) the assorted cake and sundries stalls. For the most part the "drop in" audience was larger than we had anticipated.

We raised about £450 on the day from sales, but the big money will come in from the sponsorship which the choir members organised - my reckoning is that we should get £2-3,000 from that. By 2:00 pm we were done for. Most people went home to watch the football cup final that afternoon (Liverpool v. a London club, West Ham) but we had culture in mind and drove up to Birmingham to take in a CBSO concert at Symphony Hall.

It's a 7:00 pm start on Saturdays, so it was a bit of a job to squeeze in a pre-concert dinner as well, but we managed the make the concert with about five minutes to spare. The concert itself was very standard fare: Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" and Brahms' 2nd. Piano Concerto. Although Gill had played all three works, I was surprised to realise that I'd never seen either the Mendelssohn or the Schubert performed live. The Mendelssohn was delightful, but I'm afraid that I wasn't converted to the merits of the Unfinshed. It still seemed to me to meander. Prettily, to be sure, but ultimately rather repetitive noodling. I was obviously tired, as the Brahms left me unmoved too. Musically, the first movement never recovers from that gloriously simple opening - horn and piano finishing each other's sentences. Of the middle movements, the slow one is a thing of beauty, but the cello steals the show - the CBSO's principal did a wonderful job and was rightly fêted by the conductor and pianist at the end. The finale was trite. The orchestra seemed to be on autopilot despite the best efforts of the conductor Sir Edward Downes, who was energetic despite being in his 80s now. The pianist was the Russian Boris Berezovsky, whom the audience clearly loved, but whom I found mannered.

During the interval, though, I saw a leaflet for a series of concerts in a fortnight's time featuring the Kirov Opera under Valery Gergiev. On the Saturday there's a concert performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Opera-Ballet Mlada. All 3 hours 40 minutes of it. So, we've booked.

Yesterday, Sunday, we went on a Singing Workshop in Kings Stanley organised by our friends of our friend Dorothy, another Stuart Singer. There were fifty or so of us (but only five men) and we spent the day learning five part songs by ear. The day was lead by Faith Watson who had an amazing ability to recall at a moment's notice each part of each song and pitch it precisely. The sound made from a standing start by a decidely mixed ability unaccompanied group after only a few minutes was really impressive. Everybody seemed to be having a good time and Faith's enthusiasm and encouragement were most infectious. There was a fine lunch and it was an easy day, but perhaps not one to be repeated just yet.