Approaching half past two yesterday afternoon there was a palpable sense of anticipation at the Cardinal Cerretti Chapel, not unlike the tension at the start of a sporting event.  The team (there was only one) had prepared and trained for weeks, and was now ready for action. Team members were straining at the leash, waiting for the starting signal as the sign to put all their training and practice to the test.

And they were not found wanting.  After the usual preliminaries, the conductor took to the rostrum and away they went!   There were slow sections, there were fast sections.  There were sections with tricky manoeuvres embedded.  There were loud sections and soft sections.  All seemed to hang together seamlessly, producing a continuous flow of inspirational sound for almost two hours.

If the reaction of the enthusiastic audience is any judge, then the team won with flying colours.

The team comprised firstly the Manly Warringah Choir, who overcame many difficulties in this complex music to communicate it most convincingly.  Then there were the “backing group” of piano, bass and drums, all sensitively supportive – and the pianist threw in a wonderful ragtime number for good measure. Next come the string quartet, whose members played absolutely delightfully, with some majestic moments and some exquisitely soft moments which held the tension so much you could have heard a pin drop.  Finally comes the Maestro, the Choir’s beloved conductor Carlos, who trained  and tested, cajoled and coaxed, and above all shared his musical soul with performers and audience alike..

We made it!  All that preparation had been worthwhile. We finished the course in style.  What a fabulous way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

Well – here we are, ready for the concert.  All we have to do now is to turn up on Sunday and sing our hearts out.  if we do just that, then the audience will have a wonderful time hearing some delightful music in inspirational surroundings.  What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon?

It’s been a funny concert to rehearse for.  Much of the music is so different from the works we usually sing.  Some unaccustomed harmonies, some weird rhythms, and some unusual languages created a potent mix of fear and doubt in our minds at the start of the session.  But it is fair to say that we have overcome all the obstacles, and are now capable of giving good performances of all four suites and the two songs.

Credit is due to everyone in the Choir for moving outside our comfort zone into these new styles.  And credit is due to Carlos too, for his patience in teaching and inspiring us, and to Valerie for her masterfully supportive accompaniment.

Will it be a funny concert in which to sing?  I think it will be a fantastic experience.  rehearsals over the past two evenings show that the acoustic of the Chapel suits the suites and songs so well that in one sense they will sing themselves.  A balance of alertness to Carlos and relaxation into the mood of the music will no doubt wow the audience.  Which is great, because that is what we are there to do.

And for those of us who feel “sung out” after these two rehearsals, don’t worry.  On Sunday, Carlos can ask us to sing the music only once!

Carolynn Everett writes this week’s blog about a close encounter with the Five Hebrew Love Songs.

As I write this, we are less than two weeks away from our next concert, and a feature of this program will be Eric Whitacre’s “Five Hebrew Love Songs”.

Way back in July 2014 we performed this suite, and I must admit that I found the rehearsals hard going. Hebrew is not an easy language to ‘learn’, and the music is quite unusual, so I suspect I was not the only one who struggled!

The week before that concert I contracted a throat infection, and it was impossible for me to sing. I booked a seat at the back of the chapel for the concert, so that I could leave easily leave if/when I started to cough. And so, as a member of the audience, I heard the choir singing “Five Hebrew Love Songs” – and it was simply beautiful.

After this experience I was delighted to learn that we would be repeating this piece for this year’s August concert. Of course, it is still difficult, and I still struggle with the Hebrew text, but …

Earlier this year we were on holidays in Germany, and we spent a few days in a little town called Speyer – population around 55,000. We were looking for somewhere roughly half-way between Frankfurt and Baden-Baden, and Speyer fitted the bill! We learned that this town has a remarkable (and simply enormous) Romanesque cathedral, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Other attractions include a very fine Jewish museum: during the 11^th century Speyer was home to one of the most important Jewish communities north of the Alps. We thoroughly enjoyed our several days there.

After our holiday it was back to Sydney, and back to Thursday night rehearsals. I am always interested in ‘the story behind the song’, and so one evening I looked at the programme notes on the inside cover of “Five Hebrew Love Songs” … and there it was! A mention of Speyer – the town we had visited just a few weeks previously, almost by accident!

To my surprise, I discovered that this suite was first performed in Speyer, in 1996. Whitacre’s notes don’t tell us exactly where in Speyer this first performance took place, but I was intrigued to discover that he was only 26 when he composed this extraordinary music, which was originally scored for soprano, piano, and violin.

You may remember that the text was written by Whitacre’s then-girlfriend, the soprano Hila Plitmann, and his program notes conclude with these lovely words…

“These songs are profoundly personal for me, born entirely out of my new love for this soprano, poet, and now my beautiful wife, Hila Plitmann.”

Eric Whitacre and Hila Plitmann were married in 1998. How very lovely!

Naomi Roseth writes that she has just returned from spending eight days at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville, now in its 28th year.  Here is her memoir of the week. 

I have attended the festival once before and sure hope to get there again.  For top quality music, ambiance and relaxation, I reckon this festival is hard to beat. 

Starting the day with a rock pool swim in the balmy weather of Northern Queensland, breakfast overlooking Magnetic Island and a stroll along the Strand to the morning’s first event – a conversation hour, set me nicely for the day.  The Festival’s new director, Kathryn Stott, chats every morning to a group of musicians, making their subsequent performances more relevant and alive. 

A concert follows, then a master class.  

A welcome siesta and some free time are followed by an afternoon and evening concerts.  A week of three concerts a day plus several additional ‘treats’ is rather intense.  Some choose to skip concerts here and there but I got a ‘Gold Pass’ and did not miss a note.  I love this time of total and exclusive immersion in music. 

For balance of programming the Townsville festival gets full marks.  We were exposed to an amazing array of works old and new, familiar and unfamiliar, challenging and relaxing, deeply moving and more casual.  The musicians came from all over the world; some young and some more mature.  And as for the range of instruments, there were of course plenty of strings but also others – for example a very pleasing combination of bandoneon, marimba and sheng.  

And then there were the special features:  a resident composer, Julian Yu, a cello octet – pleasing to the ear and eye alike and the splendid Goldner Quartet.  They have been playing in the Townsville festival for 25 years! 

The highlights? There were so many. 

Perhaps the concert that moved me most was the one in which we heard Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’, Shostakovich’s last work – a sonata for viola and piano, and Massiaen’s ‘Quartet for the End of Time’.  A sad theme ran through these pieces, but it touched me to my core. 

Then to lighten things up, a theme in a subsequent evening was ‘Love’!  

Finally, one masterclass stands out.  It was conducted by the renowned British clarinettist, Julian Bliss.   I wished that the entire Choir was there.  So much of what Julian said about focus, direction, colour, breath and commitment, echoed Carlos’ words to the Choir on a Thursday evening.   

I may be imagining it, but I reckon that it has recently been possible to gauge the state of rehearsals by the state of Carlos’ sweater.

During this cold weather, he has usually come to rehearsal in a dark sweater, very appropriate to the outside temperature.  The rehearsal starts, and we sing something reasonably well.  Then we make a mess of something.  Off comes the sweater, the specs are re-adjusted on the end of his nose, the mobile phone is checked for being turned off, and we can tell that he means business.  Then starts a determined process of de-constructing the music phrase by phrase, note by note, and then re-constructing it note by note, phrase by phrase, until it is in good shape.

I did not see Carlos arrive yesterday, but as soon as rehearsal started the sweater was nowhere to be seen.  That had to mean that we were about to embark on something tricky.  Indeed we were.  The song Son de la Loma may be short, but it is fiendish.  Why?  Maybe because it encapsulates something of all the other pieces we are singing.

For a start it is in Spanish, a language most of us do not understand, and which looks very much like Latin and Italian but is actually pronounced very differently.  It is more difficult even than the Hebrew in the Five Love Songs.

Then there is the syncopation, both within bars and across bars, not unlike some of the sections of the Little Jazz Mass.  But Son de la Loma takes the technique a stage further in the section where the upper voices sing one syncopated rhythm and the basses sing another, quite unrelated but equally syncopated rhythm, synchronized in alternate bars.

And if that were not enough, just like the otherwise straightforward music of West Side Story, the notes rush on you relentlessly, demanding your complete attention.  As we discovered last night, if you drop your concentration for just the smallest fraction of a second, you lose the plot, completely and irretrievably.

So it is indeed fitting that Son de la Loma will be the last item on the program.  And, presumably, in performance Carlos will not be wearing his sweater.