Dear all
Rehearsal tonight was very productive – well done to everyone there! We started going over a couple of movements of the Vivaldi (numbers 2 and 4 to be precise) as a warmup – I really want to get the dynamics I want in the second movement, so we will keep working on that!
We then spent some time on the Faure Requiem which, considering we only sung this for the first time last week, is already sounding very good. We went through the first movement again before looking at the the ones we didn’t try last week, in order. There’s not much to say about this piece at this stage as we are still note-bashing (and the notes are not the most complicated) but we need to get much better at contrasts in dynamics to make this piece effective!
We then looked over the bits we have already done from the Vaughan Williams Te Deum, which is starting to sound a lot more confident each time we do it! Tenors and Sopranos’ impressions of trumpets were very good tonight! Sopranos and altos could still be more confident with their entry at the bottom of page 10, but the triplets on page 12 and 13 were excellent!
Finally, we sung through the Vaughan Williams Antiphon, which could use some more familiarity work but is generally fine. We are coalescing around these 4 pieces for the concert in June, which are about 1 hour 10 minutes in total.
Solo Auditions
There are solos in both he Vivaldi and the Faure, which we hope to ‘cast’ from within the choir. We will look to hear some people for this at the last rehearsal before Easter on 5th April. Please let me know in advance (d.ansticepim@gmail.com) if you would like to come along so I can plan enough time at the end of that rehearsal. We need a minimum of 2 sopranos, and alto and a baritone, but it would be nice to split them up further:
Vivaldi:
Laudamus Te (2 sopranos)
Domine Deus, Rex Coelestis (soprano)
Domine Deus, Agnus Dei (alto)
Qui Sedes (alto)
Faure:
Offertorium – Hostias (baritone)
Pie Jesu (soprano)
Libera Me (baritone)