2004-2005 Season

2004-2005 Season

Sixth year in the chorus. As has become common, it's a light year for us, so I'll put all the concerts on one page again, and update it after each concert.

Britten Spring Symphony (October 2004)

Y'know, I failed to write this up soon after the concert, and it apparently made so little impression on me that I can't remember any details about the piece at all now. Not going on my favorites list any time soon, obviously. I'm listening to the archival recording now to remind myself of the piece. It seems typical of the Britten that I know, with strangely compelling discordances and unusual leaps between moods, interspersed with wacky solos.

Reviews:

Janacek Glagolitic Mass (January 2005)

This was the piece I was looking forward to most of this year's choral programs. I'd heard some interesting things about the piece, and it was so different than anything we typically do. It was fun. We rehearsed it a few times in the fall to get the notes and language (it's written in Old Church Slavonic), but it was mostly put together musically in the last week - we came back from the holiday break for our first rehearsal on Monday, January 3rd, and had the first performance on Thursday, January 6th.

Janacek translated the standard Catholic Mass to Old Church Slavonic and set it to his own angular music. Michael had an interesting description; for the Credo ("I believe"), he asked us to imagine that we were pantheistic pagans who had two weeks ago converted to Christianity, but we hadn't really figured out the whole church thing yet, so we were celebrating our new found faith in our old joyful uninhibited pagan ways by shouting out in a primal fashion. I'm not sure whether we actually achieved that effect - it's hard to really get that primal feeling when you're in a tux - but it is a good description of the music.

It's very difficult music for the chorus, because it never quite aligns with our instincts tonically or rhythmically. If you stop paying attention for a couple measures, you're probably going to miss your next entrance because we often come in unexpectedly on a new tonality. Right up until the first concert, people in the chorus were blowing entrances. But it came together on the first night quite well, as the reviews reflect. In fact, Vance George, our conductor, told us that we were better on the first night of this performance than we had been on the last night of the performance the last time we performed this piece. For me personally, it's starting to even make a little sense in my head and becoming fun rather than terrifying.

Reviews:

Schmann Das Paradies und die Peri (February 2005)

I forgot to update this after we actually performed this piece. Like most of the work that we've done this year, it didn't make much of an impression on me. It's straightforward German classical music. Nothing surprising. Nothing interesting. It's one of the few pieces I can remember that left nobody in the chorus with a positive impression - normally a piece grows on us, such that some people miss it. This one, every singer was thankful that the run was over after the final performance. It just didn't do anything for us. Which isn't to say that we performed it poorly. We did what we could with the material, and the critics liked it. Oh, the concert did have one positive outcome - the four days of having to sit through a long soloists' section left me with plenty of time to think up the idea for cognitive subroutines, which was pretty fruitful to explore.

Reviews:

Haydn Harmoniemesse (May 2005)

When we first picked up this piece, I had the same feeling as I did the other time we did Haydn, where even on our first read through, there was a comfort level with the music which we sometimes don't achieve until concert week with other pieces. We know German classical music, we know how the formalism works, and we can play with it. The piece came together quickly - I think we only had four or five rehearsals before concert week. It's not a masterpiece or anything, but it's got several catchy tunes, and doing it with Paul McCreesh, conductor of the fastest Messiah ever, it certainly blazes along - there's barely anywhere for the chorus to catch its breath. There were also a couple fun moments along the way.

Reviews:

Beethoven's Ninth (June 2005)

We did Beethoven's Ninth my first year in the chorus, but I don't think I wrote it up because it was before I started this chorus webpage. It was fabulous, of course. Doing it again has been really enjoyable, because it's just so memorable. I went to one rehearsal of one hour's length before concert week, because I basically still had the whole thing memorized from five years ago. And the music is thrilling to sing, partially because we get to go _way_ over the top. I find myself dancing on my toes in the concerts in anticipation of the good bits. And when we get to the end, and the entire hall explodes with applause and a standing ovation, it's a phenomenal feeling. I may be less thrilled with it by the seventh performance we're doing, but after the first two, I'm feeling pretty good.

Reviews:

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