It’s that peculiar time again.  All the preparations are complete, there is nothing more to do but to wait in eager anticipation until Carlos raises his baton in the Chapel on Saturday.

It feels a bit like sitting at the top of the steep upwards drag, sitting in the carriage, waiting for the roller coaster to tip over the top and start its careering way down and round the circuit at who knows what speed.  Performances often go past in a flurry of fleeting moments, just as one’s memories of roller coaster ride are concentrated in a few mind-blowing thrills.

There was much mutual admiration last night, and deservedly so.  The Choir hugely appreciates the work the orchestra puts in to accompany us so effectively.  Concertmaster Catrina commented that the Choir sounds even better than it did for the last Messiah, in 2014.  We all thought the soloists to be wonderfully competent and engaging.  And most of all we all appreciate Carlos for all his willingly shared musicianship, his attention to the all important details, and his determination to do justice in every respect to Handel’s inspiring music.

I will leave a final word of encouragement for us to the tenor soloist, Nathan.  He commented on Tuesday, “You all give out so much positive energy, and that energy will infect the audience.”   That’s a great compliment.  Thank you, Nathan!

Next week will be very special for members of the Choir.

All the preparation and planning will come to fruition as we move towards the culmination of fourteen weeks rehearsing Handel’s Messiah.  As Carlos said last night, this is the time to see the music as a whole, to feel the overarching message permeating the work by understanding connections between individual pieces.

Some people prefer the buzz of the performances.  For me, the most magic moments come at the last rehearsal.  The music is all together, and there are no distractions.

Distractions?  Well, for those of us who are easily distracted, the audience can be quite a challenge.  Weren’t Fred and Linda supposed to coming tonight?  Who is that in their seats?  Or maybe they are somewhere else?  Or perhaps they are coming tomorrow?Then someone walks out stifling a cough or something worse, and then the doors at the back open and a car drives past or the front-of-house folk busy themselves with the poor stricken owner of the cough or worse.  And that could be just the first quarter of an hour!

There was an opportunity at the recent Sydney Chamber Music Festival to ask professional musicians how they manage to avoid being distracted by the audience.  The answer is that for them it is not an issue, not just when the auditorium is unlit but even when the it is fully illuminated.  Cellist Michael Goldschlager put it succinctly when he said that for him a performance is a contract between him and the composer, (not the audience), where he reproduces to the best of his ability the sounds which the composer intended.  The audience is in a way immaterial; if they happen to be there that is fine, but he would play the same even if there were no audience.

Next weekend we will play to two full houses, houses full of potential distractions..  Maybe I need a few lessons in the Alexander Technique to improve my focus.  Maybe I should discipline myself to watch only Carlos.

Whatever, I suspect that next Thursday will remain my moment of the week.

Wasn’t it good to sing all the choruses in Messiah last night?  After weeks of working on the detail of each one, seemingly at times in isolation, at last it all began to come together.  Next week the soloists join us, then then the orchestra.  At this point the music will be complete; in all its majesty, beauty and glory.  What a privilege to sing such wonderful music under such an inspirational director as Carlos!

Last night there were some really good signs.  The altos set us off with their first entry in warm, velvety tones.  The Sopranos sang the long runs with clarity and direction.  The Tenors managed some very difficult, angular lines in the midst of more melodic sections with aplomb.  And far be it for me to comment on my colleagues, the Basses, but I thought we gave a firm foundation to the rest of the Choir.

We are about to give two memorable performances of one of the repertoire’s most famous oratorios.  We in the Choir, the soloists, members of the orchestra, directed by Carlos will no doubt do the music justice.  So all we have to do now is to ensure that as many people as possible benefit from our efforts putting up more posters and by persuading our friends and family members to fill the remaining empty seats.  Let’s aim for two completely full houses!

As Naomi reminded us at rehearsal last night, in only three weeks’ time we will be preparing to spend Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon singing Handel’s masterpiece, Messiah.

There was a salutary reminder last night that the music is not a cake-walk and that we need to revise some of even the best known choruses in order to sing them to the best of our ability.  And, as Carlos says each week, we must get our heads around the meaning behind the music if we are to communicate it effectively to our audiences.

I wonder how Handel was feeling three weeks before the first performance  This was of course in Dublin, where the composer had spent several months at the invitation of one of his patrons, the Duke of Devonshire.  He had professional musicians and singers, sufficient rehearsal time, and the only issue seems to have been the need to transpose some of the arias to suit the vocal range of the chosen soloists. That performance and a subsequent one before he returned to London were a considerable success.

The success was not repeated in London.  The work was considered too dramatic to be performed in a church.  Conversely, it was deemed sacrilegious to perform it in a theatre or concert hall.  It took some time for London authorities and audiences to find the oratorio genre acceptable.  And the rest is history, as they say.

The TryBooking website alone is selling tickets for 16 performances of Messiah this December, which can only be a small proportion of the total number of performances across the country.  It’s good to know that we are continuing a long tradition in the company of so many like-minded people.

This week’s blog comes from Roger Pratt, recently returned from a few weeks in Central Europe, including Vienna.

I had hoped that the Vienna Philharmonic would be playing at the very grand Musikverein while I was there, but that was not to be. Instead I saw the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, a huge and very Russian sounding orchestra. The first half was Bruch’s Violin Concerto, with Julia Fischer, arguably one of the greatest violinists of the 21st century, as soloist. The Bruch is maybe hackneyed, but is still such an emotive and soul rending work, especially the slow movement.

But the highlight for me was the second half – the 13th Symphony by Shostakovich, known as the Babi Yar. It is a dark, sombre and harrowing work. Babi Yar was the site near Kiev, where the Germans in 1941 slaughtered 35,000 Jews in the space of two days. Shostakovich depicts this through his music, which is a choral symphony but featuring a bass only line-up. I counted 60 basses at this performance, and their sound authentically had that deep full Russian timbre. It is a long symphony, lasting over an hour, and was a highly emotional experience. The huge audience in the Musikverein were totally silent for several minutes after it finished. Applause somehow felt inappropriate.

You may wonder why this symphony would be so special for me. Well, I was privileged in 1987 to be asked to sing in the bass chorus of the CBSO under the baton of Simon Rattle. We performed the Babi Yar at the Royal Festival Hall in London and later went on to record it for Decca. That experience stayed with me, and hearing it done so meaningfully by a full Russian orchestra and choir, in such a sublime venue, was indeed something very special.

That was supposed to be the end of the concert, but we were given one final treat – an encore. It was Nimrod from Elgar’s Enigma Variations. This is one of the most ‘English’ pieces of music ever written, and was performed beautifully by the orchestra. Just when I thought I had reached my emotional zenith, having that wash over me brought tears to my eyes. Music can do that to you. It may not happen often, but when it does it truly is an unforgettable experience.