Behold, the sea!

It occurred to me last night that I haven't got round to posting mp3s of the Sea Symphony. So, here you are:

1st movement
2nd movement
3rd movement
4th movement

We read through the hard bit at the end of the 4th movement last night. Very entertaining! Turns out most of the choir can count to 2, and 3, and 4... but not so many of them can still do it when the time signature changes repeatedly :-) Still, it was a lot better than I suspect most other choirs would have managed on their first attempt. My personal tip to anyone who struggles with music like this, which is fast with constantly changing time signatures: what I find helps me most is tapping the downbeat of every bar with my finger on the page. I think this works because it gives you a physical connection to how long each bar is. Apart from that, the most important thing to remember is to sing ON THE BEAT. It doesn't matter, when sight-reading, if the notes or rhythm are slightly wrong, but if you don't sing on the beat you've got no chance, plus you are making it more difficult for everyone else. (See my sight-reading tips for a fuller explanation of this.)

I'm really enjoying doing Mahler 2 in such detail, and when we got our top G restored to us last week, it put me in a good mood for several days! (Not that I'd enjoy singing top Gs all the time, you understand, but when we do get such an important one, it's a big deal, and we want to keep it!) I'm really looking forward to the concert.

And a few final links:

A fascinating (and lengthy) interview with Angela Hewitt about Bach.

Another post from David Griggs-Janower about the state of choral music (I mentioned part 1 of this a few posts ago, I think).

And, were any of the rest of you members of the Puffin Club when they were little? I was, for years, and I LOVED it, but I'd totally forgotten about it until I read that Puffin Post is coming back!

EDIT: I almost forgot to say - I had a lovely day out on Saturday, singing with the Needwood Singers in Aysgarth Church in North Yorkshire. A nice drive up there with Claire Croft (her mum is the conductor, which is how I ended up singing with them), a fun afternoon of sight-reading, a HUGE amount of free food provided for the choir between rehearsal and concert, a good walk around Aysgarth Falls, and then a concert that went pretty well. I think my favourite item on the programme was Vaughan Williams' Turtle Dove, which I don't remember ever singing before.

And, finally finally, quite a few people have told me that they missed my radio programme but would have been interested to hear it, so (assuming they weren't just being polite!) I've put the mp3 online (and added a link to the sidebar). It's just under 15 minutes long.