Laufet Brüder, eure Bahn!

I sang Beethoven 9 in Todmorden last night as a favour for Terry. Great fun, although it's always a little frustrating when working with anyone who's not the Hallé - you know the standard can't be anywhere near as high, but you still have to bite your lip a bit when the woodwind end up a couple of bars ahead because they weren't watching, for example. Still, for an amateur performance it was really rather good. The conductor (Chris Swaffer) and the chorus master (Greg Beardsell) were both excellent, in particular. (It said in the programme that Greg conducts the Manchester Boys' Choir (as well as the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and many other things) - I can only assume he wasn't conducting them when they prepared Mahler 3 for us last month, as I think they'd have been much better then!)

The programme did manage to totally miss out the tenor soloist, which I should imagine he wasn't too pleased about. (Well, he was listed at the start, but didn't have an individual page with his bio.) He was very good though (Richard Barraclough was his name, and to redress the balance I won't name any of the other three!) and he particularly amused me during the rehearsal when he made a bit of a clatter by CLIMBING INTO THE BAR, which was a sectioned-off area in the same room. (Well, to be accurate, the clatter came when he climbed out again, but that was what coincided with a quiet bit!) (And to be fair, I think he was only trying to refill his water bottle, but the idea of a tenor climbing into a bar amused me too much to pay attention to such details :p )

All the soloists sounded great, actually, although the soprano caused quite a few problems by being totally unable to follow the beat. Even when they all moved so that she could see the conductor, she watched him yet paid no attention. She did get better, though, after quite a few goes at the solo quartet page that ends with her on a top B - she got that right in the concert, although she managed somehow to get a bar ahead at some point earlier in the movement, which confused things a bit - the conductor had so much to do trying to ensure that everyone else didn't follow her that he forgot to bring the choir in, so it was just as well that there were several of us who were confident enough to come in with their "Deine Zauber" anyway.

I went along expecting to sing tenor, as that's what I'd offered to do (I usually do when I'm helping out another choir, because they are usually short of tenors but have hundreds of altos). I was particularly keen on this because it was a chance to sight read, which you know I love, and as a bonus I would finally get to sing the Turkish march bit in the middle! (that's the Laufet Brüder bit referred to in the title). I did sing tenor for the first part of the rehearsal, but they seemed pretty confident (I found out later that there was a Hallé tenor there, who I know very well by sight but I've forgotten the name of (sorry!) - one of the newer ones, anyway). And there weren't that many altos (in fact I think there were fewer altos than basses!) and they weren't very confident, so I shifted over and sang alto. I know the alto part from memory - at least I did, but an hour and a half singing the tenor part put me off a bit, so I needed to glance at my copy from time to time.

Word to the wise, by the way - if you have trouble memorising things and you weren't in the choir last time we did Beethoven 9 (which we sang from memory), start learning it NOW. Because we sing it again in October, and it's very likely that we'll be doing it from memory again....