Urhoin or yö?

I can't decide which is my favourite Finnish word. It's one of these two. "Urhoin" means "hero" or "brave" or something like that, and has what was described as a "character-giving r". "Yö" means "night" and is the sound everyone seemed to most enjoy making - I certainly did!

We finally met our Finnish language coach on Wednesday, you see, and she was very nice. Sadly I've forgotten her name - can anyone remind me? She spent the second half of the rehearsal telling us how to pronounce the words of Oma Maa. It's not actually as hard as it looks - once it had all been explained, I found it much harder to find the words on the page (see last post for explanation) than to remember how to say them. Anyway, it's nice to be able to add another language to the list of those I can claim to be able to read. That's quite a long list - must write it down sometime! (With the proviso, of course, that I may not actually REMEMBER how to pronounce, say, Hungarian, even though we only did it a year ago.)

That was just the second half of the rehearsal - the first half was spent in sectionals, with the ladies learning Holst's 8-part Ave Maria with David while the men went off to polish the Brahms with Jamie. The Holst was very lovely - and not that hard - although I got more and more irritated by the fact that a large number of people didn't seem to know the meaning of pp, sotto voce or senza crescendo. Argh. But no doubt they'll catch on eventually.

And I've just realised I haven't posted since our first gig of the season, the Eric Chadwick Memorial Concert in Salford. That went really well despite our numbers being very depleted - Komm Jesu Komm was possibly the best it's ever been, although the audience (predictably) seemed to prefer the Hallelujah Chorus. But that was good too :-) Plus, I was excited to notice that the tenor part of Onward Christian Soldiers starts the same as the tune, except with the two phrases reversed. I've never spotted that before! Sadly no-one else seemed as interested as me :p

Anyway, I seem to have accumulated a load of links I've been saving to post. That'll teach me to leave it for nearly two weeks! These aren't in any particular order....

Lucky Voice Pods in Tiger Tiger - the new variation on karaoke. Has anyone tried this?

G sharp is the hardest note to identify, allegedly. I'm not convinced by the explanation either.

An interesting article about how they get the fireworks to explode in time with the music at outdoor gigs.

An article about a choir of Russian monks.

A very strange set of Gilbert and Sullivan comics.

It seems Mozart wrote something very rude. I'd never heard of this before.

A useful A-Z guide to Wagner's Ring cycle.

Iggy Pop's extremely long and detailed (and funny) rider (i.e. what his requirements are when he comes to do a concert).

A review of the opening Hallé concert of the season. (I'm quite taken by the reference to the Elder Wand! But you know I love Harry Potter.)

Talking of Harry Potter, Fred and George Weasley are coming to the Bridgewater Hall!

An article investigating why Sibelius wrote nothing in the last 30 years of his life.

Is there anyone else who's baffled about why they're having swimming championships in the MEN Arena next year, when we have a perfectly good Olympic-standard pool at the Manchester Aquatics Centre?

Some of you might be interested by this video on writing fugues. The narration is irritating, because they did THAT like a fugue too, which means that for most of it you can't understand a word... but the fugue itself is clever, and the only one I've ever seen that's based on a Britney Spears song! If you don't really understand how a fugue works, this might help. (The "Der Saure Weg" section of Komm Jesu Komm is the most recent fugue we've sung, in case you were wondering. Also, the Sanctus and Libera Me sections of Verdi's Requiem both have fugues.)

Sadly Manchester Cathedral has had a stained-glass window smashed by vandals. I just can't begin to understand the mindset of someone who would do that.

English National Opera's new production of Carmen is not receiving as much praise as they might have hoped.

An interesting story about what the Hallé marketing director does at concerts!

An analysis of the theme from Some Mothers Do 'Ave "em. I never realised it was based on Morse code!

And, finally, more details on the Manchester Boys Choir story that I mentioned last time.

Oh, and I almost forgot... the Finnish word that's the one most commonly used in English is indeed SAUNA. Well done, the anonymous person who guessed that (or looked it up on Wikipedia like I did!)