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.

I don’t know about everyone else, but at last night’s rehearsal I thought that we were finally getting to grips with the Little Jazz Mass.  It has taken some time, but it was gratifying to feel that all the hard work which we – and more noticeably Carlos – have put in over past weeks is bearing fruit.

Last night was our twelfth rehearsal for this concert, and there are five more to go.

Anne and I we musing about rehearsals last weekend whilst listening to the final of the Young Performer of the Year.  The three soloists were stunning.  They may be young in years but they all displayed great musical maturity. It is a shame that only one can win, but we felt sure that they would all make successful careers in music.

But as for rehearsals, we thought not so much about the soloists but more about the orchestra.  They had to accompany three concertos at very short notice.  One, the Beethoven Violin Concerto, is well-known, and most orchestral players will have performed it several times.  But the other two works, a Weber Clarinet Concerto and a Prokoviev Piano Concerto, are much less well-known, and the latter piece in particular is fiendish to play.  I wonder how many rehearsals they had.  Two, perhaps, or maybe three…….and maybe some individual practice time beforehand.   That they played all three pieces flawlessly is a tribute to both their hard work and their innate musical talent.

In the five rehearsals we have left for Love, Peace and all that Jazz, we have to tidy up some loose notes and then really get into the spirit of each piece.  It’s all fantastic music, and, with Carlos’ continued teaching and encouragement, I am sure that we will do justice to it.