A musical update

 There have been several blog posts buzzing in my head, but this musical one has come up first  because of a wonderful Prom broadcast of the St John Passion recently.  You still have a couple of weeks to hear this on BBC Sounds if you wish.

The St John has been at the heart of my musical life since I was 20, a student at UEA with the fortune to have got to know Philip Ledger who conducted our choir with Peter Pears as Evangelist and I think Robert Tear too.  Later the Bach choir I sang with here in France performed the Passion with local soloists including my friend Fraech as Evangelist. This Prom performance was wonderful - Suziki has an astonishing way of getting the choir to speak text, even in chorales.

My life as a singer has drawn to a gentle close - truth to tell I was always too lazy to develop the technique I really needed, allowing sight-readiing ability to substitute for enough solid practice.  But after nearly 70 years (I began with local solo competitions at the age of 9) I can happily claim to have enjoyed many marvellous experiences, singing in choirs large and small and from time to time as a soloist.  I have worked with remarkable musicians - apart from Mary who accompanied me often in Schubert and more, and conducted the choir in Wirksworth for several years (a highlight in Wirksworth was Britten's St Nicholas), there was Tony Milledge with the Canonbury Chamber Choir in London.  My musical life was also greatly enriched by early music with Emma Kirkby and Evelyn Tubb (with whom I sang in a quintet doing Dowland for a while in my 20s) and later witnessed Vivien Ellis's first encounters with early music - she remains a close friend and inspiration.

In France there has been David Austin with the Chorale Franglaise here in Lunel, my lovely friends in Ochoeur (an octet of 7 since I usually was the only tenor), with whom I enjoyed several years of Christmas music in local protestant chapels.  I've worked with singing teacher Christian Buono, with the multi-talented Stéphane Fauth whose musical summer weeks in the Ain were initially for Mary but where I attended as a 'groupie', sharing driving and accompanying our dogs, but ended up singing with the chamber groups in arrangemenets Stéphane had made of everything from Stephen Foster to Vaughan Williams.  

Most recently here in France our friend Kamala Calderoni, a wonderful soprano who has ended up conducting BaBach, but was also my singing teacher for a while.  Through her I got to take part in performances as diverse as Purcell's The Fairy Queen (with large chunks of Shakespeare mixed in) in an ancient building in Montpellier, and Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore in a casino in La Grande Motte..  And then there was Monteverdi's L'incoronazione de Poppea, some of the most divine music given to some very unsavoury characters in Poppea herself and Nero.  Leaving the choir has been difficult, not least for me because I found I no longer had the ability to keep up in polychoral pieces, but also because it seemed as if I was letting others down.  But my presence could not have helped the choir when I could no longer hold the line; and amazingly there are more tenors in BaBach now than ever.

I have also enjoyed (and shall probably still enjoy) recorder playing, especially here in France with our friends Charles Whitfield and Pierre Bonniffet and of course Mary playing cello continuo.  I have a collection of underplayed recorders of all sizes (from garklein Flötlein  to bass) which I must revive a little.  Alongside this, over my adult life there has been a revolution in quality and availablility of recorded music.  listening to wonderful singers like Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Janet Baker, Cecilia Bartoli, Sarah Connolly and many, many others.  Their amazing technical and artistic talent is at once daunting for me if I thought of continuing to sing myself, but also an inspiration and delight in our daily lives via radio and recordings.

Musical ornament at the Val du Séran