The Russians are coming!

You know, I totally forgot about this when I wrote my last post, but I want to share two recent incidents with you.

The day we got our scores for Alexander Nevsky, I was looking through mine on the bus back into town, and a man got on and sat next to me. He noticed what I was looking at and got very excited. He said to me, in Russian, "Are you Russian?" - at least I assume that's what he said, because he repeated it a moment later in English. I explained to him why I had the score, and he was delighted and read all the movement headings out to me (sadly they're the only bits for which the Cyrillic has been left in, so he couldn't read the rest).

Last week, I lost my voice at some point on Tuesday (it got much worse in the next couple of days, although it's more or less OK now), and when I popped into Starbucks on the way to choir and asked for coffee, the barista said "You sound as if you need an extra shot!" I croaked "well, would you believe I'm actually on my way to a choir rehearsal where I'll be singing in Russian!" She made me repeat this statement, and when she was sure I'd said what she thought she'd heard, she shook my hand and introduced herself as a native of St Petersburg! I told her she should come to the concert, and she seemed quite keen, especially as her father will be here that day.

I'm slightly disappointed that there have only been two random Russian encounters, since when the second one happened it felt as if they were everywhere! Has anyone else had any similar incidents?

Anyway, there's been a fair bit of singing this week. We sang the whole of Nevsky (including the non-Russian bits) on Wednesday. It's going well - can't wait to hear it with the orchestra. Still no idea whether or not it will live up to my expectations of how loud it will be - next week will answer that question! Then last night we did a bit of sight-reading, which is always fun (some specially-written pieces for the World AIDS Day concert), plus a bit of the Fauré for the same concert.

I know the Fauré from memory (we were asked to memorise it many years ago, although on that occasion they changed their mind at the last minute and we performed with scores - but I'd already learned it by then) so I found it quite difficult last night, because it turns out that the scores that are to be used this time are NOT the same as the one I've had for many years (and memorised). There aren't a HUGE number of differences, but most of them are in the first movement, and that's the bit we did last night. It took me a while to realise that people were singing different notes to me, and even once I *did* know that, it was really hard to get the "proper" notes out of my head. This new version just sounds wrong! Still, the notes that are in my head are still in the chord each time, so if I sing them by accident I'll still fit :-)

Couple of links to finish: The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment have a very successful late-night series of classical concerts, but I'd never heard about this till Tom Service wrote about it in the Guardian. Sounds like a great idea - we should do something similar in Manchester!

The Royal Opera House are copying Calendar Girls!

No doubt many of you followed the US election. In which case, you may be interested in this series of fabulous photos of Barack Obama from the last few months, and also behind-the-scenes photos from election night (note: the server seems to be overloaded for the latter set, so you might have more success getting the slideshow to work if you try early in the morning when it's the middle of the night in the USA).

Graham E has kindly sent me links to some Gerontius CD reviews - I hadn't even got round to looking yet, so thank you Graham! I always obsessively search for concert reviews immediately after all our concerts, but since I don't have a CD yet I haven't had anything to remind me to look for reviews... Anyway, there's a good one from The Guardian, a great one from Music Web International, and a not-quite-as-great-but-still-pretty-good one from Musical Criticism. And finally, the Manchester Evening News one still doesn't seem to be online anywhere (I just spent a while searching too - if anyone's found it, please let me know!) But Graham has supplied the text. I just pasted it here, but then I realised it includes words I can't use, so if you want to read it, see his comment to my last post.

And finally, if (like me) you have become addicted to Blocks With Letters On and have reached the hard bits, you might find some useful hints here or here.

EDIT: Just seen a nice Spectator interview with the lovely Ed Gardner.