Advent I

For Advent I - I bring you J.S. Bach's choral prelude "Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland" BWV 659 (Come Redeemer of our Race).   I played it this morning as our communion Voluntary, and it remains my favourite Advent Choral Prelude of Bach.

Played here by Ton Koopman, on the 1714 Silbermann organ, Dom St. Marien, at Saxony, Germany.

Top Ten Hymns-Part II-Advent

As a promised regular feature - and with Advent I hitting the calendar on Sunday, here are my top ten Advent Hymns, in no particular order.

1. On Jordan's Bank (New Westminster)

2. There's a Voice in the Wilderness (Ascension)

(Composed by Hugh Bancroft - yay Canada!)

3. Lo, He Comes With Clouds Descending (Helmsley)

4. Hark, a Herald Voice is Sounding (Merton)

5. O Come, O Come Emmanuel (Veni Emmanuel)

Provided the pronunciation of Israel is correct

6. Sleepers Wake (Wachet Auf)

7. Hail to the Lord's Anointed (Cruger)

8. Come Thou Long Expected Jesus (Stuttgart)

9. Herald Sound the Note of Judgment (Neander)

(Who was the Herald guy anyway - and why is he so prominent in Advent and Christmas?)

10. Your Kingdom Come on Bended Knee (Irish)

I won't bother with a list of least favourite Advent Hymns, that would be like choosing a least favourite list of Lenten Hymns ... not sure there are any.

 

"Handeling" the Christmas Season

At the beginning of November, I was looking at my calendar thinking "how is this going to be possible", and now I'm looking back at the calendar thinking "How did I do it?"  One DCS Concert, a week of Orfeo, and then a week of Solomon with no break in between.  It was a total rush, and worth every minute of it, but I seem to have completely crashed in the last two days.  I have very low energy and am favouring the couch over the pile of work that has amassed in its wake, which include a pile of marking, setting final exams and planning Advent and Christmas at the church.

There is one thing though that I am most happy about, aside from a benefit concert next Sunday, and the annual run of Messiah in mid-December, I really have nothing extra on my plate to worry about.  The benefit concert might have a few surprises, but they should be all cleared up after our en-mass rehearsal this evening, and the music is NOT hard.  I might be enlisted into playing the organ for a few things with the brass band, but that doesn't stress me out too much.

The other thing I have to look forward to is that I only have one week left of teaching this semester - which is hard to believe, but exciting at the same time.  At U of A, I am one lecture ahead, at Concordia, a lecture behind - luckily neither course has an alternate section or a shared exam, so if I don't finish everything I need to finish in one, I can alter the exam accordingly.  I do owe Concordia two more quizzes in the next three classes.  Aren't they lucky?

And on the Seventh Day ....

... He rested ... and so shall I.

Solomon went great this Friday!  It was a great house, and very well received.  The soloists were fantastic, and the orchestra was focused, and strong.

A few highlights:

Act I ends with lovely lullaby for King Solomon and his wife - a gorgeous little chorus known as the "Nightingale Chorus", ending with just a quartet of muted strings - leading into the intermission.  Well at the after the final chord, a lovely moment of silence, disturbed ever so gently by ... the sound of someone snoring in the front row.  Well, I guess it worked!

I spent the intermission in my dressing room with Nancy Argenta figuring out tempo changes in her next aria, and then invited in our continuo cellist to go over the same moments, talk through all the cadenzas and etc.  Nothing like learning the music of the second half during intermission!  To quote the soloist - we stuck together like "shit on a blanket".  

As far as the union clock was concerned, we finished the oratorio with one minute to spare, saving the organization a fair bit of money!

Although a few notes were left on the floor from time to time, the performance was a career highlight, and hopefully the start of something very special.

Dan Taylor suggest that next year we should try to mount "Saul".

Stay tuned!

Show day!

Having a relaxing morning just hours before having to take out the tails and get ready for tonight's performance of Solomon.  By all accounts, it will be great, if not a very exciting performance.

The week has been a bit stressful at times.  Having taken a week off before the concert to put on four performance (including two dress rehearsals) of Orfeo (which was great by the way), it was straight to the first orchestra rehearsal Monday afternoon.  That rehearsal went just fine - a great sounding group of musicians, and just a few tweaks of style and tempo that needed to be done.  

Tuesday was another day though.  

After having to take care of three media appointments, one TV, one radio and one newspaper, I was off to the soloist's rehearsal.  The soloists are fantastic, a career highlight for sure!  The orchestra was a bit taken back by some of the fast tempos, but we managed to work through them together.  The only problem was that with a 2.5 hour orchestra call, we completely ran out of time, and didn't get to the end of one one of the more difficult stretches in the work - which wouldn't been seen again until the dress rehearsal.  Tuesday night's orchestra and choir rehearsal went very well though - the choir is in fine shape for this show, and are now at the stage where we NEED to perform this work before the excitement slides.

Wednesday, after teaching my morning class at the University, it was off to another TV engagement around noon, then off to find a replacement for my white bow-tie, which went missing after the last show I used it, and a trip to the chiropractor (it seems that the spirits scene in Orfeo did quite a number on my back, and I've also developed a bit of conductor's shoulder and forearm.  My DCS is an active release technician though, and worked through the kinks, so it is much better today).

Wednesday night - dress rehearsal!

First half went great - just a couple of the adagios at the end of the soloists arias that needed reworking, but otherwise, the choir sounded great, as did the orchestra.  Second half - not quite as good.  The aria we didn't get to on Tuesday afternoon needed much work, eating up about 15 minutes of the rehearsal, where I really only had ten minutes to spare.  I had to cut out the last four arias in the rehearsal in order to get to the final movement (there was an audience of junior high and high school students there, and I didn't want to end without the final chorus!) which will mean that those movements will see their second run through ever - at tonight's performance!   Still on my mind right now is if the second half is indeed too long.  I've thought of cutting a few recits, but I think we'll keep it as is.  

If we do go past 10:30 PM though, it's going to mean a pretty heavy fine for the choir to pay overtime for each member of the orchestra, as well as the staff of the Winspear.  I really don't want this to happen, but as my wife says - once the first downbeat is given, I can't worry about it.

So in the hours I have left - I need to get comfortable with some tempos, some segues between recits and arias, and a feel for the piece as a "whole" which we really didn't get a chance to feel at the dress rehearsal.

There might be some "exciting" moments at the performance tonight, I just hope they are as a result of the great music, and not as a result of anything that might go wrong!

Toi Toi Toi

Opening Night

Well, technically tonight is Dress Rehearsal #2, not really opening night, that's tomorrow night, but we will have an invited free audience tonight - so really, it's day one of three!

Back in the Spring, when I accepted the offer to sing in the chorus for Orfeo, there was a hint of "what am I getting myself into" in my thoughts.  The last time I was involved in an opera was when I was about thirteen, I was in the children's chorus of La Bohème, and the last time I tried to memorize anything sung was nearly ten years ago.  So the thought of memorizing nearly twenty minutes of Italian was a bit daunting.  Add into that a concert with Da Camera, and then a week later a full production of Solomon, putting an opera production in the middle of that might be considered insane!  By as one of my choristers at my church keeps reminding me "this is the life you chose".  And so it is - and I don't regret it.

This tiny production of Orfeo is quickly becoming the highlight of the year for me.  Monteverdi's music is of course fantastic, the principles, which include Suzie Leblanc and Colin Balzer in the title roles are absolutely amazing, the period instrument orchestra led by Richard Sparks is incredible, and the stage direction of Ellen Hargis has been, to say the least, inspirational in every way.  On our first full run of Acts I and II, we had at least one chorus member in tears from the emotional impact of the music and staging.  The hope is we can pass this on to the audience, which will be surrounding the thrust stage.

A little taste from Orfeo as seen here directed by Jordi Savall:

At this moment in the opera - A messenger is telling Orfeo about the death of his new wife, Eurodice, who was bit by a poisonous snake while picking flowers for Orfeo's hair.

Lest We Forget

Lord Thou Hast Been Our Refuge - Edward Bairstow
St. Paul's, London.

One down ... four to go

First concert of the year with Da Camera is now in the bag - and I'm happy to say, a resounding (that's re-zound-ing, not re-sound-ing ... sorry inside joke) success.  The concert was a real mixed bag of rep, from Clemens Non-Pappa to Knut Nystedt, and through a literature of gospel spirituals.  I post up some of our sound bites when I get the archive recording back.

We had a few guests on the program, involving a local youth choir of 60 voices, and three different conductors - Me, the conductor of the youth choir, and my assistant.  So, there was a fair amount of choralography with regards to getting all 90 some singers on and off at various moments, and into their various mixed formations.  My wife, who is also the Business Manager for Da Camera was in charge of the logistics of this, and it worked, better than can ever be expected!  (She keeps lists ... I don't)

Now on to the next four concerts - including two runs at Orfeo next weekend (please God, let me suddenly be fluent in Italian and develop a knack for memorization in the next two hours), and then of course the much anticipated Solomon (while you are at it God, can you please cure my Queen of Sheba of her laryngitis?) then the first Christmas concert of the year, yes, in November, with one of our local military bands (God, why did you ever allow someone to write the carol "Do you hear what I hear"?).  Add on to this the fun of Advent carol services and a couple of mid-December runs of Messiah, and you have yourself a pretty full November and December!

I wish you all the best of luck in the upcoming busy season!

Oh Handel - why couldn't Solomon be more popular?

One of the greatest challenges of producing a work that isn't done very often is finding scores!

I posted a while back about the difficulty of finding choral scores for Solomon, but that was like the kindergarten of score shopping compared to finding orchestra parts!  I'm very lucky that I'm an old highschool friend of our countertenor soloist who has a world of connections, and suggested I try Clifford Bartlett's little publishing company "King's Music".  When I was searching for the full score, it seemed he has the only edited copy besides what can be found online.  (In actual fact, the full score that Clifford sent me was a hand edited version done by Paul McCreesh for his recording - and all it is is a photocopy of the Chrysander (HGA) score, last printed in ... 1867 with critical commentary, new bar numbers, and cut and pasted in such a way as to save space, and make it BIGGER.  One of the things that has been removed though is any trace of a continuo realization.

Again, luckily enough, King's Music has hand written all the orchestra parts, and they are very well done - great cues, clear bar markings, sensible page turns and etc.  We had the parts shipped here in three packages (blame Canada post for having a restricted package weight for oversea shipping), and they all arrived - although one of the packages took considerably longer than the others, causing a bit of panic.  The only other problem is - there is NO keyboard part!  Most professional early music ensembles in Europe would of course have harpsichord and continuo specialists so there is no need to have a part done for them, as they would probably rather do it themselves anyway.  A bass line and figured bass is all they need - or even a full score is enough.  Unfortunately for me in Edmonton, where we have very talented keyboardists, and skilled harpsichord players - there is no one who really wants to realize the part on the spot, so a keyboard part is needed. 

So, todays job for me was to "make" a keyboard part - and not just one - but two (we have both Harpsichord and Organ on stage, and often they are running concurrently - so we've hired two players).  I found the Chrysander score in pdf form online (this link is a long download, just to warm you)- printed out two full copies (344 pages each) and hole punched them (four holes - which by the way is almost impossible to find anywhere) and put them in a legal sized four ring binder.  After which I marked all 688 pages (344x2) with bar numbers (a smarter person would have done this once, and copied twice) and about six hours later I have two full scores with a keyboard reductions that my two players should be able to make some sense from.

Tomorrow afternoon, all scores will be delivered to the orchestra, and that is out of my hands, and I can continue to put work into memorizing Orfeo for Wednesday's rehearsal....  

All I can say about the memorization aspect of this is:

"Ahi caso acerbo, ahi fat'empio e crudele, ahi stelle ingiuriose, ahi Cielo avaro!"

translate it as you will ....