Evening Morning all!
I want to get into the habit of rounding up the rehearsal each week, with a note about things to work on before next week when you have those spare few minutes. So, here goes…
This week we worked on the two pieces from the Rutter Birthday Madrigals that are available on the music materials page (no3 and no4). We managed to get all the way through no4, and most of the way through no3. These are challenging pieces but you continue to impress me with how well you are coping with them, especially the stylistically different no3! If you can, do have a listen over these two pieces before next week – familiarity with how they sound overall will be the difference in mastering these in the time we have. Plenty of recordings on YouTube/Spotify to choose from, and my project for this week will be to set up a public access playlist with all the music for this concert. Watch this space…
We also looked at the Britten Choral Dances, especially the first piece (Time). This is starting to sound really exciting! But we could all do with more confidence on our own parts, especially the sopranos – don’t be scared of the high notes! If you find yourself with a spare minute to look over this movement this week, focus on page 4 and the first 3 bars of page 5 (ie the bit that’s slightly different from the rest). Again, just familiarity is key.
We looked briefly at no’s 2 and 3 of the Britten at the end. No2 just needs tidying up (Tenors and Sopranos – watch tuning on the last notes of each phrase), but no3 needs another look over – it’s been a couple of weeks since we did it, so that will be ok with another go over.
I have been reliable informed that we have 7 rehearsals left before the concert, assuming we rehearse every week. There is still a lot to cover, but I am very much looking forward to it!
Best,
Dave