Colin – Finchley Chamber Choir

Scenes from a professional life

Posted on 21/08/202322/08/2023 by Colin

My career in choirs began in earnest at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, under Simon Preston, as well as joining the Monteverdi Choir under John Eliot Gardiner and the newly-formed Sixteen under Harry Christophers. This was a great and formative time, learning with such inspiring leaders, but it has been the subsequent 400 months of being in the country’s only full-time professional choir, the BBC Singers, which has really shaped my knowledge of the choral world in all its depth and splendor.

Adapting technically to the challenge of such a rapid turnover of repertoire week upon week, from 15th-century polyphony to the most outré contemporary score, is not for everyone. Your flexibility, stamina, musicianship and some necessary compromises are tested to the full. A bit of humour goes a very long way, however, and taking yourself too seriously was always discouraged!

Here are some examples of the good, bad and ugly that I recall from all those experiences.

There have been countless musical peaks, from a short piece of atonal Webern – Entflieht auf leichten Kähnen – conducted by Pierre Boulez in Lucerne, which was simply the most stunningly perfect performance ever, to Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers in Istanbul, where I delivered the tenor solo echoes from a turreted gallery overlooking the city in truly muezzin-like guise. It’s often the unexpected, however, which turns out to be the most memorable performance. In 2006 we gave a concert of unaccompanied choral music to a provincial audience outside Mexico City. Directly in my eye line was a seriously tough-looking hombre, most unlike the standard Radio 3 metropolitan audience member. As Purcell’s Hear my Prayer O Lord unfolded, this man was reduced to tears just by the physical experience of the collective voice in front of him. That is what I consider to be a truly great live performance.

On the other side of the coin, there have been some ‘bads’. The daily Morning Service on Radio 4 was for many years the start of my performing day, live to up to one million listeners. A new and, in Anglican terms, deeply inexperienced conductor had a nerve-wracked first go at leading it. Not only was he removing a shoe (don’t ask) as the red light came on for the broadcast, but he continued to give a note for the hymn a fourth too high! The tenors and basses made a quick calculation that the new key was manageable, the sopranos went back to the written pitch and the altos improvised. The public was treated to a line of John Cage followed by a deafening silence…

Like the good, the ugly can arrive when least expected. Warsaw seems to have been an unfortunate place for such glitches. A live broadcast to several countries was once punctuated by a nun carrying on with her regular flower-arranging in the church with dramatic sellotape ripping and paper shredding, oblivious of the atmospheric calm of the music we were singing.

But more ugly, perhaps, was the encore which we prepared in Polish in the late 80s as a mark of friendship to our hosts. When we started singing, though, the performance was greeted with a shocked silence as the words were, in fact, a celebration of the magnificent character of the Communist Russian rulers!

Voix de Vivre in Hungary

Posted on 05/08/201922/08/2023 by Colin

DSCF0635 In July 2019, 22 Voix de Vivre singers set out for Kecskemét in Hungary to take part in the International Kodaly Music Festival, a great honour for us and a landmark in the choir’s history as it was our first ever foreign tour. Most of us flew in, and some intrepid travellers arrived by train, late for the first beer.

We were superbly hosted by two local chamber choirs – Cantus Nobilis, who we already knew from their visit to the UK two years ago when we shared a concert, and the newly-formed KEK (Kecskeméti Énekes Kör) choir with their charismatic conductor Peter Erdei. KEK welcomed us to our concert venue, the baroque Piarist church, with two fabulous songs by Kodaly, which set the bar pretty high for us! But the capacity audience were really appreciative of our British programme, featuring glories of British music from Byrd to Macmillan, under Neil’s typically inspired direction. We were glad we’d been warned in advance that in Hungary a slow handclap is a sign of particular appreciation!

Local press review by Varga Géza, hiros.hu

The Kodály Arts Festival continued on Friday night with a concert by Voix de Vivre. This chamber choir from England in collaboration, this evening, with members of the Kecskemét Singing Circle presented a programme including compositions by Byrd, Tallis, Stanford, Holst, Britten and Zoltán Kodály. In every minute of the concert, one could feel the opening phrase of the anthem of William Byrd’s Psalm 81: “Sing joyfully.”

…..Voix de Vivre sang with visibly enormous, heartfelt joy. One noticed throughout that all the members of this English chamber choir deeply felt the opening words of the first William Byrd piece: ‘Sing joyfully’. After this beautiful composition by the ‘father’ of English music, under the guidance of Neil MacKenzie, they performed renaissance choral works and pieces written by English romantic composers.

In the second part of the concert, the guest choir first performed late romantic folk songs and then twentieth century and contemporary works. James MacMillan’s The Gallant Weaver particularly moved all those present. Composed to a text by Robert Burns, the Scottish national poet, this piece combined Scottish folk music and Celtic Psalms to produce one of the most distinctive examples of MacMillan’s secular choral music. One could only listen with awe.

The uplifting closing number of the concert was a joint performance by Voix de Vivre and the Kecskemét Singing Circle of Henry Purcell’s “Hear My Prayer, O Lord”.

“Song makes life more beautiful, the singers make others lives too. There’s not much point if we sing to ourselves, it’s better if two get together. The more the better, one hundred, one thousand, and the great Harmony, in which we can all be one. Then we can really say: the whole world rejoices.” Zoltán Kodály’s thoughts – listening to Voix de Vivre’s programme – are certainly known to members of this English choir. But if they weren’t, then his truth was discovered and practised: their concert in Kecskemét testified to that.

DSCF0686 The day after our concert our new friends in KEK had organised a trip for us to a Hungarian heritage centre out in the country. It is very flat round there – the clue is in the name, the Great Hungarian Plain – but beautiful with fertile fields of grain and sunflowers stretching to the horizon, and woods of birch, plane and acacia giving welcome shade from the hot sun. We rode in horse-drawn carts, visited a preserved Hungarian peasant’s cottage, ate goulash, made the acquaintance of pigs and turkeys, and were given a fantastic display of horse-riding and driving skills. Margaret maintained British honour by volunteering to mount one of the horses, thereby fulfilling an entry on her bucket list, to ride across the Hungarian plain!

We were all so grateful to the small group who organised this trip for us: Margaret, Lesley, Andrew and Neil, as well as to our Hungarian friends for their kind welcome – and we are sure it won’t be the end of our Hungarian association!

“It was such a privilege for us to be singing at such a prestigious event.”
“Kecskemét…we were struck by how beautiful it was.”
“Cantus Nobilis Choir laid on a buffet supper for us…we were made to feel extremely welcome and the language barrier seemed to melt away.”
“…amazing collection of folk instruments at the Kecskemét Musical Instrument Museum.”
“… certainly an experience to remember.”

Catharine Jessop (with contributions from other choir members)

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Voix de Vivre – some impressions from the Honorary President

Posted on 08/04/201921/08/2023 by Colin

On the 13th July I took part, as is my great pleasure to do when required, in Voix de Vivre’s concert of great German choral music. Reflecting on the evening’s experience, I found myself asking what exactly is the value of such concert events. Not that I am in any doubt of their absolute value, but in this age when music is more often experienced as a pre-packaged consumer item, and with audiences for even the more familiar orchestral repertoire dwindling in number, how can we devotees of choral repertoire best communicate our enthusiasm for it to audiences and singers alike?

Leaving aside for now the widespread decline in appreciation of all forms of what used to be called ‘classical music’ – the European tradition of a structured, discursive music that can take audiences and musicians through an actual emotional and intellectual ‘argument’, – what can be said in support of its universal value, and in particular of its choral manifestations? Quite a challenge, when figures such as Jeremy Vine the TV presenter have recently publicly dismissed the whole subject as something which would interest only a few, mainly middle-aged, people. Looking around outside professional London circuits you could easily form the impression that his analysis is at least broadly factual, if unjust. By and large, both choirs and their audiences are not only dwindling but ageing.

There are two problems here; one is the general disinclination to engage with our common ‘classical’ heritage, the other the particular public perception of choral music. It is true that historically the choir has been associated with religious music on the one hand and with the once great local choral society tradition on the other, dating from a time of more defined and coherent communities. Choral music is now felt to be out of step with an age of rival leisure attractions now available to all (individually and privately) such as the telly and the cinema.

In the face of those problems I would point to a number of possible positives that could be urged. The first must entail a conviction on the part of dedicated practitioners of ‘classical music’ and their faithful audiences that this is a living and evolving heritage of absolute value to all humanity both in its content and in the way it is practised. Some repertoire may require homework on the part of its practitioners, and even of its audience, but that only serves to enhance its rewards.

As to the choral repertoire in itself, we must make it clear that its greatest monuments are as fine as any in the orchestral repertoire or in any other art form. At several points in history, choral composition has touched peaks as high as those found in any other musical medium, as Saturday’s concert amply demonstrated. I speak as a professional musician of some 58 years (if one takes into account my daily drilling as a choral treble from the age of seven) who has experienced just about every medium from the inside and the outside, from the choral to the operatic, and as a hobby violin/viola player from the orchestral to the chamber repertoire. I say without any reservation that the works of Bach, Brahms and Schoenberg that were presented last Saturday to a select audience are, of their kind, as important and as towering as those composers’ achievements in the better known media.

It is high time for choral music to cease to be the Cinderella of the ‘classical’ repertoire, and for the skills of today’s amateur choirs, which seem to become increasingly refined even as their numbers dwindle, to be directed to the wider presentation of this remarkable and priceless ongoing heritage, and to the stimulation of new additions to it.

There is another value to this whole enterprise, equally or perhaps even more important in an individualistic and egocentric age. That is, the shared effort that music-making involves – and I include the audience in this. The performers’ experience is of one kind, the listeners’ of another, but both audience and performers are engaged in a joint effort to bring music to life. Music is not something written on a page; it only exists when human beings realise it (in this case their own bodies are the instruments) in collaboration with the composer, and he with whoever conceived the text. Nor is it a solitary affair; even when we make music alone we are in conversation with the composer.

In this way all music is heightened human communication which pre-supposes a listener, an audience. In this activity both performer and audience furnish their minds with objective beauty, intellectual nourishment or emotional release (most often all three together), and their bodies with physical engagement in the creation of those qualities. In making music we also make a precious space for self-forgetfulness in which we can meet communally on equal and objective terms, and, if I may sound a flippant note, give our egos a break. For all my joking, I cannot overestimate the value of this last benefit to both performers and audiences.

It is an honour to have been asked to be the Honorary President of Voix de Vivre, and I salute its efforts and honour its achievements in realising all I have alluded to above. My friendships with its conductor, a colleague of some 40 years, and with its most recent chairman, a singing ‘pupil’ (though I have little to teach him!) of more than 30, are amongst my dearest, and I hope I may long yet enjoy a beer with them while picking over past performances, planning programmes and generally keeping abreast of the choir’s latest successes. Ad multos annos!

Jeremy White

Dusting off choral masterpieces

Posted on 31/01/201822/08/2023 by Colin

Singers and audience alike enjoy the well-loved repertoire. It is so nice to be bathed in familiar tunes that make you feel at home. Audiences rarely fail to be stirred by Faure’s Requiem or Mozart’s Mass in C Minor. For singers it is often a relief to open the music and find that it won’t be a sight-reading battle.

Sometimes though, choirs and singers prefer to live rather more on the edge. There are Musical Directors who commission new works or dig deep into the musical archives to find pieces that challenge the singers and excite their audiences.

Fashion applies to composers and their works and it is often hard to keep your place in the sun. It seems hard to believe but the glorious creations of J.S. Bach lingered in the shadows for over a century until Felix Mendelssohn rescued them and brought them back to the attention of the music loving public.

It is wonderful to listen to a familiar favourite but, in my opinion it is even more special to find something that speaks to you in a new way. We should cherish those moments when a piece of music surprises or challenges you, when the hair stands up on the back of your neck or tears spring to your eyes.

It can take a bit of time and you may have to sift through a lot of ordinary before you find the special but the hunt is worth it. There is something heroic about the way that human beings strive to achieve perfection in performance and the journey is worth watching even when they don’t quite make it.

Occasionally we are rewarded, however, with a moment of beauty that lasts in the memory for the rest of our lives. I will never forget hearing Strauss’s Four Last Songs at a late night Proms performance in the Albert Hall. Even now, years later, I can close my eyes and recreate the feeling created by the perfection of the singing and the heart-wrenching message of the music.

Perhaps it is time for you to search out those moments and try to find music that pushes beyond the edges of your experience. There is probably a lot of opportunity in your local area. Why don’t you try it?

http://www.concert-diary.com

https://kith.org/jimmosk/schwartzAB.html