Morning all
Last night was the two-thirds mark of our practice timetable. We were in an different venue, with acoustics that many of you found unhelpful. We had the pleasure of Anne-Marie Owens joining us. My plan was to spend a chunk of time going through the remainder of the big movement Von deiner gut, and then run through stuff we have done plenty of previous work on and do some brushing up. The first bit of the plan was good, but the review of the Brahms especially, and the other movements of the Haydn, and Zorongo – these were all a long way short of where they were last time we sang them. Laudate Dominum was pretty good, but still closer to the learning the notes and words stage than the making it perfect stage. And Va Pensiero was OK for a first look in a long while. But as a general statement, we are all still figuring out notes and struggling with words. There is a huge amount of music to take on board for this concert, so no suggestion that we should all be able to sing the whole of the Creation from memory. But it would definitely help if we were all a little more familiar with at least one aspect of the music. Learning words is one helpful initiative. There are files with phonetics and translations on the website to help you. And for the music, you have practice tracks if you want to devote hard time to it, or just listen to the choruses on Spotify or wherever.
For the record, the movements we worked on were:
Im Anfange p7
Der Herr ist Gross p76
Von deiner Gut p132 to end
Singt dem Herren p151
See you all, back at THS for a second week, next Tuesday.
Have a good week.
CH