Tewkesbury and Ivor Novello
Realised I haven't mentioned how Big Fat Concert went - which was very well: I think it is probably the highest profile single event I've ever done, and while there's a lot more I could bring to the piece given some more work, I was pretty happy with how my bits went.
As my piano-playing is laughable, I'd learnt my line pretty much in isolation of the rest of the piece (choir, orchestra, off-stage solo quartet), which made for some readjustment when we finally rehearsed together on the day of the concert. My favourite section to sing is still 'The Secret Rose', a setting of a Yeats poem where the soloist usually has the melody with everyone else accompanying (dense blocks of harmony surging underneath a moderately schizophrenic solo line - great feeling), but overall favourite is probably now the Rilke setting, 'Wo Bist Du', which reminded me of those lovely lovely Brahms choral pieces I did at Cambridge, with the harmonies of the long-drawn-out phrases meshing together every couple of bars: not easy listening, especially, but amazingly expressive. In contrast, 'Recitative I', very fast and rhythmically irregular material for soloist and the lead violin alone, was great fun to practise by myself but rather too hair-raising to enjoy performing yet.
The most common questions afterwards (surprisingly un-posh reception where we introduced to the Princess Royal, who is a patron of the choir) were on the lines of 'How hard was it to learn?'. I suppose working on a normal piece I spend about the first 20% of my practise time shoehorning the notes and words into my memory, while the rest of it is refinement: working on tricky phrases over and over again and trying to remember what A was saying in my last lesson. Mugging up for an opera rehearsal (eg that Boheme), I might just do that first 20% and worry later about refinement when I know what the director wants. For a really catchy melody&words combination, like the Ivor Novello songs I've ended up learning for a concert in Guildford tomorrow, singing the piece through a couple of times will be enough to learn the dots, and I then have to force myself to carry on working on it. (I admit it: I think they are very trite. As long as the audience likes them.)
For a contemporary piece, though, the actual dots take much longer to learn. (Fortunately the Rutti piece was trickier rhythmically than pitchwise - nothing atonal to speak of.) When I HAVE learned them, though, I find all that repetition has already done a lot of the technical polishing for me, so I can skip a lot of that boring final phase of practise. I think this is why I quite like doing contemporary music, though it's probably too much to hope that many people will want to listen to it.
As my piano-playing is laughable, I'd learnt my line pretty much in isolation of the rest of the piece (choir, orchestra, off-stage solo quartet), which made for some readjustment when we finally rehearsed together on the day of the concert. My favourite section to sing is still 'The Secret Rose', a setting of a Yeats poem where the soloist usually has the melody with everyone else accompanying (dense blocks of harmony surging underneath a moderately schizophrenic solo line - great feeling), but overall favourite is probably now the Rilke setting, 'Wo Bist Du', which reminded me of those lovely lovely Brahms choral pieces I did at Cambridge, with the harmonies of the long-drawn-out phrases meshing together every couple of bars: not easy listening, especially, but amazingly expressive. In contrast, 'Recitative I', very fast and rhythmically irregular material for soloist and the lead violin alone, was great fun to practise by myself but rather too hair-raising to enjoy performing yet.
The most common questions afterwards (surprisingly un-posh reception where we introduced to the Princess Royal, who is a patron of the choir) were on the lines of 'How hard was it to learn?'. I suppose working on a normal piece I spend about the first 20% of my practise time shoehorning the notes and words into my memory, while the rest of it is refinement: working on tricky phrases over and over again and trying to remember what A was saying in my last lesson. Mugging up for an opera rehearsal (eg that Boheme), I might just do that first 20% and worry later about refinement when I know what the director wants. For a really catchy melody&words combination, like the Ivor Novello songs I've ended up learning for a concert in Guildford tomorrow, singing the piece through a couple of times will be enough to learn the dots, and I then have to force myself to carry on working on it. (I admit it: I think they are very trite. As long as the audience likes them.)
For a contemporary piece, though, the actual dots take much longer to learn. (Fortunately the Rutti piece was trickier rhythmically than pitchwise - nothing atonal to speak of.) When I HAVE learned them, though, I find all that repetition has already done a lot of the technical polishing for me, so I can skip a lot of that boring final phase of practise. I think this is why I quite like doing contemporary music, though it's probably too much to hope that many people will want to listen to it.