As is the custom, a member of the clergy gave a instructions on what to do should an emergency arise (“Stay in place”) and then said a short prayer for this concert, “where score, player and acoustic” come together. Isn’t it amazing that the synthesis of these three words can describe the whole concert-going and music listening experience and ethos—in fact, my whole life.
I thought about those three little words all during the day’s musical events.
This year’s Celebrity Organ Recital was given by John Scott Whiteley, retired organist from York Minster known for his two performances of Bach’s Complete Organ Works for the BBC.
Whiteley began the program with Charles Tournemire’s “Improvisation on ‘Victimae paschali laudes, ‘” a piece I should really learn some day. He then played the “Prelude and Fugue in F minor,” a spurious Bach work that may have been composed by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.
What got my attention, though, was Judith Weir’s “The Tree of Peace,” unlike any Judith Weir piece I’ve known. It was definitely NOT “Weir-d” as some of our choristers used to describe her music. You could almost call it peaceful. Here’s what the program notes said:
The first variation develops conventional counterpoints around the theme, the second illuminated gently, as if fairy lights suddenly glow on a Christmas tree, the third represents the concept that peace engenders great strength and the last returns to the balmy tranquility of the opening.”
He then played two works by James MacMillan, followed by a 25-minute transcription of an improvisation by Pierre Cochereau, organist of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, who “carried the tradition of the great French art of improvisation to unprecedented heights.” This large work took the form of an Organ Symphony and it’s incredible to think that it was all improvised.
I then attended Choral Evensong sung by the combined girl choirs from Gloucester and Worcester Cathedrals. They sang Responses by June Nixon and Magnificat/Nunc dimittis by Sumsion, and the tone was so ethereal and so beautiful that I thought I surely was hearing a choir of angels.
Thinking back to the “score, player, and acoustics” triumvirate, surely one of the most important of these is “acoustics,” for without it, music sounds dead and lifeless. That is partly why these choirs sound so heavenly, and that is because of the reverberant acoustics. Of course, their musicianship is also a big factor—the beautifully pure tone of these girls’ voices was out of this world.
Tonight was another incredible concert—the Rachmaninoff Vespers sung by the choral group, Ex Cathedra, conducted by Jeffrey Skidmore. I couldn’t find any description of the group in the program book, but found this online: Ex Cathedra are a leading British choir and early music ensemble based in Birmingham in the West Midlands, England. It performs choral music spanning the 15th to 21st centuries, and regularly commissions new works.
This was my first experience at hearing the Rachmaninoff Vespers, and I immediately thought back to 1997 when my husband, Carl Crosier, toured with the Compline Choir of St. Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle, to Russia and in addition to singing Compline, also experienced music by the Russian choirs. No wonder that when he returned to Hawaii, he added quite a few Russian works to the choral library at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu.
What made this concert so incredible was that the choir sang a cappella continuously for two whole hours without a break and without losing their pitch. The music, mostly homophonic in nature, was all unfamiliar to me except for the “Nunc dimittis,” which I believe is part of the Russian repertoire which Carl brought back. It definitely has a solemnity about it, but is at once very emotional and spiritual at the same time. I almost imagine falling asleep to this music, and by that, I mean that it could almost put one in a catatonic state. The reverberant acoustics of Gloucester Cathedral played an important part in keeping the sound alive and moving.
In previous visits to the Three Choir Festivals, what I always found very remarkable was the interaction between members of the audience— I’ve met some incredible people here at Three Choirs. Tonight at Choral Evensong, I was sitting by myself in the back row, when this gentleman came up to me and said, “Katherine?”
James Coupe said that people in Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford area have been reading my posts about the Three Choirs Festivals for years! It was because perhaps I was one of the first blogs for organ and choral music? So I guess it was easy for him to spot me in the crowd (Also because I think I am the ONLY Asian in this whole festival audience!)
That reminds me, John and Rosemary Allsop (whom I saw at Berkeley Castle this morning), also told me that they had read my posts ever since they met me last year in Hereford, and even asked how the wedding of my former student, Joey Fala went! Yikes! I guess people read this blog after all!
At tonight’s concert, I sat next to Peter and Barbara (Laverty) Hulac, from Denver, CO, where Barbara is an organist in Montviiew Boulevard Presbyterian Church. What was so amazing is that Barbara graduated from Westminster Choir College a couple of years before I entered the graduate program there!
Small world indeed!