I think it was Renee Fleming who once remarked that for just seven days a year, her voice was in perfect form and on those seven days, it could be guaranteed that she was not singing in an opera, recital or show! Oh, how true. My voice is always at its best when there’s no-one there to hear it (really!) and conversely, it seems that most singers can always guarantee getting a cold or a sore throat prior to a concert. So as a singer, you try ever so hard to protect yourself from stray bugs and you become almost paranoid about people coughing and sneezing near you - almost to the point of harbouring murderous thoughts about them if they are insensitively generous in sharing their infection with you. At least being an amateur, my income doesn’t depend on my singing (which is a good thing because I couldn’t cope with poverty). I now understand why some professional singers can appear to be so “precious” about their health. The voice is such a fragile thing. Anyway, just over a week ago at choir rehearsal, I could barely sing, but by Saturday evening, in time for the Wessex Male Choir concert (and with the help of Vocal Zone, several glasses of medicinal Merlot, rest, and lots of steam inhalation) I had recovered a voice of sorts that wobbled horribly anywhere past “top A” and sounded more “reedy” than “lyric”. (Some unkind folk would say “plus ça change?”)
I’ve had mixed experiences performing at St Andrew’s Church in Chippenham with the Wessex Concert Orchestra, so I approached the Wessex Male Choir concert there on Saturday (3 October) with a degree of trepidation. It was a charity recital in aid of Cancer Research UK and we were all looking forward to singing with the effervescent ladies of the London-based Jubilate choir – a sort of “return” match following our successful concert with them earlier this year in Ruislip. With the Wessex having about 50 choristers and Jubilate about 40, if every performer brought just one person to the concert, we would be assured of an audience. As it was a charity concert, the local supporters of Cancer Research UK had also been busy in drumming up support so it was a pleasantly full church and a good, receptive audience to which we performed. I think that Jubilate must have a similar philosophy to our own judging by the highly entertaining way in which they perform. Certainly the audience seemed to like them.
Whatever the drawbacks of St Andrew’s, the acoustic is undoubtedly good and it was a genuine pleasure to sing Franz Beibl’s Ave Maria there with the Choir’s small a capella group, Presto. Singing the top part of this fabulous arrangement reminds me why I enjoy being a tenor so much! Now, knowing that I was developing a cold, the sensible thing to have done would have been to avoid going to the “Afterglow” (the post-concert social activity involving beer and singing), but when have I ever done the sensible thing? It’s all too easy to get carried away on such occasions and before I knew it, I was belting out Nessun Dorma with complete abandon, ignoring the good advice an adjudicator once gave me: “Never louder than nice”, but then, this was singing in a pub!
Preparations for the WCO concert on 28 November at St Joseph’s College, Swindon, are going well and the concert promises to be rather special. The lovely and very talented Lithuanian violinist, Diana Galvydyte, is making a very welcome return to play with us again. The programme comprises a sumptuous mix including John Williams’ music from the film Schindler’s List and the gorgeous theme from Ladies in Lavender by Nigel Hess. (My only regret is that we are not playing more of the Ladies in Lavender music – especially A Broken Heart which is simple but heart-rendingly beautiful.) The rest of the programme includes John Williams’ Star Wars Suite, excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet, and Verdi’s mercurial Force of Destiny overture (known to many, I suppose, as the music from the Stella Artois ad!) At least the last few weeks have been a bit quieter and amazingly I’ve even found time to practice more than usual - which is just as well considering the keys, clefs and timing in the Prokofiev. (When I first saw the music, I thought our long-suffering librarian had given me violin music by mistake!) The amazing thing is, practicing seems to work. The more I practice, the better I get – but all things are relative! Putting some new Larsen strings on my ‘cello and taking my bow to that consummate gentleman and master bow-maker, John Stagg, for a long-overdue re-hairing might also have made a difference to my scraping. (Wouldn’t it be great if blokes’ heads were as easy to re-hair?”)
