Musical soirees

[trixtah]

saluqi and I went to see the The Choir of Westminster Abbey last night, which was an excellent night out. It was made quite entertaining by half of Canberra also apparently going to see it, and the Parliament House (which is where the concert was) carpark maybe having the capacity for half the vehicles. And the fact that it was properly raining for the first time in weeks. After saluqi did some excellent cross-country manoeuvres in finding us a parking spot amongst some trees (who needs a 4x4 when these intrepid Aussie babes are about?), we got to the venue with literally a minute to spare. It was full, so about 40 or so people (including us) got shunted upstairs to sit in the balcony.

It's funny, I was strongly reminded of a school hall, although it was much bigger, and the abstractish gum tree artwork at the back was quite nice. Perhaps it's a more interesting chamber when it's gussied up for state occasions, but at least we had comfy seats. When the choir came on, unfortunately the room was a bit too large for the number of voices (about 30) - it sounded nice (it wasn't a dead sound), but it was quiet. I'm certainly not a purist myself on such occasions - I think a bit of discreet amplification can definitely help out when the space doesn't quite fit the performance.

However, really nice voices - you can see the depth of training they have. It was a nice selection of music as well. I liked the Elgar, even if it is a bit of a cliché. The Handel woke us all up before the interval with some fun rumpty-pumpty. saluqi particularly liked the Hubert Parry (and I did too), and I thought the Taverner was really cool... although too quiet. I was impressed by the bass - he must have felt like he had run a marathon afterwards. There was one modernist piece, possibly by Ross Edwards, an Australian composer, and like much modernist classical music (certainly not all), it didn't float my boat. One "dud" out of an entire programme is fine by me.

But the best part was the cool (in a typical geekly way) organist! They had him on the harmonium to start with, but he did a couple of solo pieces with a proper organ, and they were the best parts, for me. We agreed it'd be nice to be able to see organists play - hands and feet - but it's not so great when they're hidden behind the console. I vote for organist-cam, myself. Since the director of the choir is the organist for the Abbey itself, it's no wonder there was a bit more prominence given to it than you might normally expect.

Strangely enough, I think I would have been quite happy without the boys singing (which is the whole point of the thing, after all). None of them particularly stood out for me, but one of the (adult) tenors (and the bass in the Taverner) certainly did. Perhaps some of that was my residual irkedness about the director's weak defence of boys-only choirs (towards the end of the article) - if they under puberty, who cares? I'm fine with adult male-only (or female-only) choirs, let me add. It was their obvious depth of training that impressed me, but not so much the boys' choir as itself. It was interesting to run up against that thought, and my wondering throughout why girls aren't permitted to have such an opportunity to be so intensively trained in that way.

Still, as I say, it was a great evening, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to go along. Canberra doesn't do too shabbily in this realm (certainly better than NZ does).