HCS Newsletter Number 93 (April 2007)

Welcome to the start of our summer term. It has been a wonderful Easter, made even more glorious by the weather. I hope you enjoyed the concert; it was well received by both critic and audience. Certainly ‘my’ audience enjoyed the whole experience; praise from teenagers is praise indeed! Concert numbers of singers were down which meant that there was more space for us all on the stage but those members who did not sing with us missed a real treat. The orchestra was delightful and the soloists a lovely group.

So, how did you spend concert day?

For me, the day began at 8.45am picking up Trish to head off to the farm to help with the staging. From feeling despondent about how many people would be there, we were lucky to have a few extra Scout personnel. We were a merry band – Paul, Tom, Geoff, Trish, Juliet, John and the Scouts and I. We heaved and pulled, established chains and in record time filled the two white lorries with all the necessary bits to keep HCS well supported. From there, Trish and I rushed back to the church to join another band of willing people to take everything off the lorries and slowly build the stage. Other gallant people were numbering seats, arranging flowers, putting up signs, moving chairs and tables and putting out bottles and glasses. The church was a hive of activity. Coffee and biscuits were served during a welcome break. By 11.00am the stage was ready; the flower arrangers putting in a few last minute touches to their splendid arrangements. Home for lunch….except I was off home to catch up on all those ‘little’ Saturday jobs that need to be done. Then, back to the church, armed with music folder plus extra folders for those who might forget theirs.

Rehearsal went well and, as always, finished on time. Had Stephen remembered to put the oven on? Hosting the two female soloists meant that the meal had had to be prepared the night before as there would be no time on the day…… Thankfully, the meal was in and cooking. Everything else went well, and then in concert dress, we returned to the church in time for the concert. Whole evening was fantastic. Eventually audience, orchestra and choir dissolved into the night – except for the few who began the dismantling process and to fill up the two white lorries – again! My day finished at 11.00pm. Some members would be up early in the morning to unload the lorries at the farm. My thanks go to them.

There were many other people whom I know had a day equally as long as mine and I say a very big thank you to them for their commitment to HCS. I am often told that the lack of volunteers is widespread amongst many societies but I am interested only in HCS. Why are we having such a problem recruiting people to represent the membership on the committee and to help in the staging of our concerts. Have you considered what would happen if those who do volunteer and do represent you simply stop?

Jane Turner

There’s no doubt that Baroque is a great challenge for a large choir. Largely, I think, because many singers are really too far from the orchestra ‘engine’ – the source of the rhythm. And wasn’t our appropriately small orchestra amazing? I particularly enjoyed the tone colour of the strings and the beautiful sounds of the woodwind; and it was so immaculately played. The soloists were a delight too. However, it is right that we should sing this music – and very successfully so. There may have been the odd passages that ‘got away’ and an interesting chord in the Handel, but nothing that seriously affected a very good performance indeed. Congratulations! I wonder whether any of those delightful images of the HCS dancers at the workshop in February came to mind on the day?!

Now we turn our attention to a very different collection of music. The challenges here include coping with a number of different pieces. They are all 20th century but ranging from Elgar and Vaughan Williams to Tavener and a piece by our President, Michael Berkeley. The Revenge by Stanford is subtitled A Ballad of the Fleet and will require clear story telling. The text is by Tennyson and is about the part that the little ship The Revenge played in the Armada. In his lifetime, this was Stanford’s most successful work – 100,000 copies of it were printed!

I hope you will find it all enjoyable and something of a foil to the Baroque music that we’ve just done and the Berlioz Grande Messe des Morts which we shall start preparing immediately after the June concert and on into July.

Please make every effort to attend the workshop on Berlioz on 30 June at Ware Drill Hall

A thrilled audience, in a packed All Saints Church, was able to hear a wonderful concert of baroque music last Saturday evening. Music of the baroque period still inspires and the two giants of that period, Handel and Bach, provided the demanding music. The Handel was the lesser-known Laudate pueri Dominum, followed by two Bach cantatas, numbers 191 and 156, and ending with the popular Magnificat in D.

Julia Doyle and Alice Gribbin, who was educated locally, were the two delightful soprano soloists, having many contributions in solo and ensemble items. Nicholas Mulroy and Jonathan Brown were newcomers to Hertford while Timothy Travers-Brown was making a reappearance. Some bass recitative made for less rewarding listening but was nevertheless delivered sincerely. The tenor had difficulty in projecting the lower register, but otherwise had an effortless flow of silvery tone. There was lovely artistry to be heard by all soloists in stylishly phrased and sensitive singing.

The London Pro Arte Baroque Orchestra was making its first visit to Hertford and provided a knowledgeable contribution to the performances. There was exuberant string playing in true chamber music fashion, with sublime baroque flutes, oboes, timpani and valveless trumpets. The chamber organ provided firm support though a little reticent at times.

The choral writing of both Handel and Bach makes great use of florid, instrumental style writing as well as solid harmony. The choir showed the required stamina to maintain disciplined, and many times, exciting singing. The division into many parts was met with confidence with the character of each chorus having purpose and direction. The mood of the opening work was effectively set with the plainsong antiphon opening the performance. Diction was good in the generous acoustic of All Saints Church, with the choir alert to details of phrasing.

The conductor, Derek Harrison, over many years, has developed the choral society into a responsive body of singers, keeping fresh-toned singing throughout the evening. From the many comments heard afterwards, it was obvious that the evening had been very much enjoyed and appreciated.

David Penrose

Song for Athene is to be part of the programme for the summer concert. It was written by John Tavener (sic), a descendant of the 16th century composer’ John Taverner. Song for Athene brought to a close the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales but was written to commemorate another young woman, Athene Hariades, who was killed on her bicycle in a road accident. The CD sold out in the shops within days of Diana’s funeral. HCS last sang it in November 1998.

Michael Berkeley recently became the President of HCS. He was in the audience for the HCS March concert. Derek said that he (Michael) was favourably impressed by the performance. But it is not the first time he has attended an HCS concert. Twenty years ago, in Feb 1987, he was there (with Brian Kay, our then President) to hear the 5th performance of his oratorio, Or Shall We Die, libretto by Ian McEwan (also in the audience); a powerful work about nuclear war. Eric Crew wrote ‘The poignancy of the words and music should make audiences more aware of the dangers and folly of our present cold war situation. It was a courageous act by all those who performed this excellent work and produced such a great performance’. Basil Moor wrote ‘One was conscious of the whole audience utterly absorbed and on the edge of their seats. The final singing of Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace fades into silence. There was a moment of complete silence before the audience rose and applauded this breathtaking performance’. Tracey Chadwell, the soprano soloist, wrote ‘No matter how much one rehearses and prepares, it is a work of spontaneous emotion, energy and concentration, fuelled by the presence of an audience and we rose to that occasion. I wonder how many people, when they first saw the score, thought ‘I’ll never be able to sing this!’ Quite a lot and full marks to Derek and HCS for persevering because the success of 7 Feb shows to all amateur choirs that where there is a will there is a way’.
(For the full account of that concert, please refer to newsletter no. 29. What! You don’t keep them?)

Michael Berkeley was born in 1948, the eldest son of the composer Sir Lennox Berkeley. As a chorister at Westminster Cathedral, singing naturally played an important part in his education and he frequently worked with his godfather, Benjamin Britten. Michael studied at the Royal Academy of Music but did not concentrate on composition until his late twenties when he studied under Richard Rodney Bennett. Since Or Shall We Die, written in 1982, his music has changed and in pieces such as For the Savage Messiah (1985) his language has become more distinctive with the emotional early pieces integrated into a tauter musical idiom.

Since then he has written (among many other works) an opera, Baa Baa Black Sheep (based on the childhood of Rudyard Kipling), Secret Garden, Garden of Earthly Delights a second opera, Jane Eyre. His works have been performed worldwide. A recording of Michael’s new work Concerto for Orchestra, premiered at the BBC Proms in 2005, is to be released on the Chandos label as part of the ‘Berkeley Edition’. He is composer-in-Association with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. He acts as Visiting Professor in Composition at the Welsh College of Music and Drama and is now the illustrious President of HCS!

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon on 8th March, when a number of us from HCS assembled at St. Mary’s Church, Cheshunt, to sing at Ulla’s funeral; just the sort of afternoon when she would have loved to be in her garden. She was a keen gardener with the proverbial green fingers; we always used to joke that the first really lovely sunny summer’s day was always on the day of our summer concert, when we would have to spend the afternoon rehearsing in the church.

We first met Ulla in the early 70s when we sang together in the East Herts Choral Society, of which she was Treasurer for several years. Ed Willson, who was their conductor at that time, subsequently suggested that we join HCS and “share the driving” with Ulla. It doesn’t seem possible that we have been doing exactly that for over 30 years.

Ulla came to this country from Sweden in 1957 to learn English; she was taking a gap year from her study of pharmacy, and took a job in Cambridge as an au pair to Mike’s cousin; it seems he was rigorous in his insistence on correcting the language of his au pairs - no doubt the reason that she acquired such an excellent command of English. It was here that she first met Mike’s parents and then later Mike himself. She and Mike became engaged in 1958 and married two years later, living for a time in Crouch End, later moving to Cheshunt, and finally in 1965 to Goffs Oak. They had two children, a son now living in France, and a daughter in Ireland. Ulla always visited them whenever possible throughout the year, often taking her turn to look after some of the eight grandchildren. Ulla always loved to maintain a Swedish style celebration of Christmas with the family.

We enjoyed an easy relationship based on our weekly journeys together and as time went on we came to know Mike too; they always took a keen interest in local issues concerning the community and environment; Ulla was a founder member of the neighbouring Lea Valley U3A, where she and Mike were particularly active in the running of the Gardens Group. And of course Mike has also been a staunch supporter of HCS, for many years helping with stewarding etc. Ulla was very attached to her dog; Katya could always be seen at the window barking her farewells when we called for Ulla on Tuesday evenings. Her favourite pastimes though were gardening, music and singing; she usually had Classic FM on the car radio as we drove to Hertford.

However despite so many social activities, Ulla was actually a very private person. She had very definite ideas about what was right and reasonable and lived by her principles. She was never very forthcoming about her health, and one felt that she would not welcome much enquiry; so although we knew that she had been having outpatient treatment for a long time, we did not know she had been on chemotherapy for nine and a half years for myeloproliferate disorder (MPD), a condition which adversely affects the bone marrow. However, we all felt some concern for her in recent months, when she was obviously unwell, but it was only lately she told us the treatment was no longer working and she was to have blood transfusions instead. She rejoiced that the first of these was very effective, but she got an infection just before the second transfusion was due and was taken into hospital with pneumonia. It was a tremendous shock to everybody when she died only a week later. She will be greatly missed by her family and many friends, not only in HCS but all those who have enjoyed her company for many years.

Sheila Dorling

O my garden, full of roses
Red as passion and as sweet,
Failing not when summer closes
Lasting on through cold and heat.

O my garden, full of lilies,
White as peace and very tall,
In your midst, my heart so still is
I can hear the least leaf fall.

O my garden, full of singing
From the birds that house therein,
Sweet notes down the sweet day ringing
Til the nightingales begin.

Philip Bourke Marston

Trekking in the mountains of North West Vietnam for MENCAP has left me with diverse and precious memories. About forty of us were on the trip which took place between March 2nd and 21st this year, and was organised from Northern Ireland.

Getting to our trekking region and back again took four of our ten days. We left Heathrow at midday on the Friday, having survived an emergency evacuation and a lot of red tape about baggage, arriving in Singapore's beautiful air-conditioned airport early the following morning. We then flew on to Hanoi's steamy un-air-conditioned airport, changed some of our US dollars into Vietnamese Dong (30,000 to the £), and travelled by bus into the old town, where we had hotel rooms for the day.

Every piece of spare land is given to rice production, and we saw some coolie-hatted workers planting out young rice plants and others working the land with water buffalo beneath huge advertising hoardings. There were interesting houses looking unnaturally tall, built with concrete, one module piled on another.

After the overnight train to Lao Cai, breakfast in a local cafe and a minibus trip to a dusty village in the middle of nowhere, our trek began. The local people gathered round and we took some lovely photos, feeling over-kitted for our walk amongst people who had so little. The weather was unseasonably hot - up in the 80s as mid-day approached - and I regret that two of us had to come back down while the rest of the group struggled on uphill to the campsite. We returned to the village shop, where we sat on tiny, plastic chairs and ate ice cream. Our guide, Twan, kindly offered us a length of sugar cane to suck, then decided we might prefer it in bite-sized chunks without the bark. The taste was intense and rather sickly but to the locals a great treat.

We were transported in various vehicles to the following night's homestay, passing back through Lao Cai city and over the bridge marking the border between Vietnam and China. We finished in a jeep travelling for half an hour or so over a road that had just been cut out of the hillside and not yet smoothed down or surfaced. The freshly-disturbed orange soil was typical throughout Vietnam.

The rest of the week was spent in homestays, where we slept on mattresses arranged on upstairs galleries that surrounded the living areas of the houses, which were built entirely of wood and bamboo. We ate mostly on outside areas under a canopy of blue plastic sheeting.
We were amongst hill tribes - what the Vietnamese call "minority peoples"- each with their own language and costume. Schools are being built for the children, so a possible future of integration might be on the cards. We were taken into a local secondary school built for the Black H’Mong tribe whose village of woven bamboo huts dotted the upper hillside. I tried out my newly learnt sentence ‘Doi den do Anh’ (I come from England) which worked the second time and caused much amusement. The brand new school for Red Dao children stood opposite; the explanation being that they need different teachers as they speak different languages.

We walked through villages in the villages where banana trees were looking lush and where two crops of rice could be grown each year thanks to good irrigation. Bamboo pipes running down the hillside achieved this most efficiently. We climbed beautiful terraced mountainsides covered in dry paddy fields waiting for the rainy season. Here only ‘dry rice’ could be grown and harvested once a year.

As the week progressed, we were gradually climbing at higher altitudes. For water-lovers, there was the chance of a swim beneath a waterfall. We crossed a number of rickety suspension bridges as we chased the course of a river. If we didn’t keep step with one another, they wobbled rather excitingly.

The weather gradually got colder, until I was glad of the woolly coat and fleece that I'd packed - not to mention the all-covering rain cape which frightened a couple of boys sent to work on the hillside with the only tool available for tilling the soil; a long handle with a spade end bent at right angles. Much of our last day’s walking was in low cloud and uphill, until a final triumphant entry to Sapa in thick fog brought us to our last night's hotel, with a banner outside generously demonstrating the language barrier:
"WELCOME TO MANCAP".
I have fond memories of tiny, lovely people pursuing us in ever larger numbers with their traditional goods for sale, living in simple bamboo huts and cooking on wood fires. I admire the tenacity of the porters, ninety in all, who saw a group of tourists through the week in difficult conditions, and wonder what the future holds for them in these times of change. Those people who sponsored me or bought my Easter Quiz have helped me to raise a stunning total of over £4000 for this charity, which supports people with learning difficulties for the whole of their lives.

(Fliss would be happy to receive any further donations for this very worthwhile charity. I feel sure that she has understated a gruelling trek; she is to be congratulated on taking part – ed.)

HCS wishes Ralf and the Kantorei every success for the premiere performance of Prince of Peace

Sat 19 May As the Kantorei will not be coming to Hertford after all this year, Hertford Voices (formed as a touring choir to go to Wildeshausen and, hopefully, other interesting towns and cities), will instead be having a singing ‘Away Day’ at Cambridge (having had several Saturday rehearsals). Anyone interested in joining Hertford Voices should contact Trish Goldsmith tel 01992 589730 or email trishmgoldsmith@btinternet.com

I meant to do my work today
But a brown bird sang from the apple tree
And a butterfly fluttered across the field
And all the leaves were calling me

For the last two years I have had the privilege of walking through London overnight as part of the Playtex Moonwalk. The Playtex Moonwalk is an unique event where thousands of women and a few brave men will not only power-walk a marathon through the night but do it wearing a decorated bra to raise money and awareness for breast cancer research and cancer care.
Last year a dear friend was fighting her own battle against breast cancer and she is now clear. I am sure we know many people, both men and women, who have had contact with this awful condition. Last year, with your help, I and my two walking friends raised over £500 and we completed the walk in six and half hours. The weather was cold and wet that night so not a pleasant experience. This year I have been lucky enough to be able to take part again, although this will probably be our last year. So far, the training is going well and we are hoping to do it again in almost 6 hours.
The walk takes place on May 19th. We will begin at Hyde Park at 11.00pm. There will be over 15,000 of us taking part and we aim to raise £6 million. Many of you were kind enough to support me last year. If you would like to do so again I would be delighted to accept your sponsorship…it really does help knowing that so many people have done so, especially when the going gets tough!!
When my sponsor forms are sent to me I will leave a form out most nights at choir but if you are unable to fill that in, cheques can be sent to me. The cheque needs to be made out to Walk the Walk Worldwide.
Thank you very much.

Jane Turner

Well, my darlings, Di is in great danger of becoming redundant. When the ed says ‘I want your piece and I want it now’, what’s a girl to do? No one has approached me with questions on affairs of the heart or affairs of state or even the state of affairs. Contentment or apathy? Likewise, Jane’s pleas for volunteers has fallen on increasingly deaf ears. If I don’t get any questions, I will (Heaven forfend) have to start making them up!

All rehearsals at Sele School unless stated otherwise.

Rehearsals start promptly at 7.30pm.
The 75% attendance rule means that members should attend at least 8 rehearsals for the next concert.

Tues 1 May
Open rehearsal

Tues 8 May
Short rehearsal followed by ‘a bit of a do’ to celebrate Derek’s 30th year with HCS and his 60th birthday

Tues 15, 22, 29 May
Rehearsals

Tues 5, 12, 19 June
Rehearsals

Thurs 21 June
Rehearsal at All Saints

Sat 23 June 2pm
Rehearsal at All Saints 7.30 pm concert in All Saints. Programme to include Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music, Tavener Song for Athene, Stanford The Revenge, two pieces (including
one for organ) by our President, Michael Berkeley; also Elgar, Mendelssohn, Harwood and Bullard

Tues 26 June 7.30pm
AGM followed by first rehearsal for the Berlioz

Sat 30 June 11.00am – 4.30pm
workshop at Ware Drill Hall

Tues 3, 10, 17 July
Berlioz rehearsals at Sele

Tues 4 Sept
first rehearsal of autumn term

Sun 16 Sept 2.00 – 5.30pm
Ware Drill Hall regional rehearsal for Berlioz
(or Sat 15 Sept Hitchin Boys’ School
or Sat 22 Sept St Clement Danes School,
Chorleywood)

Sun 28 Oct 2.00 – 5.30pm
Harlow Sportscentre dress rehearsal for Berlioz

Sun 4 Nov 7.30pm
Berlioz Grande Messe des Morts by Joint Herts Choirs and Westminster Philharmonic Orchestra in Royal Albert Hall. Rehearsal probably– 2.00 - 5.00pm. For more information, check
www.Jointhertschoirs.org.uk

Sat 15 Dec 2007
Christmas Concert

Sat 15 March 2008
Spring concert

Sat 28 June 2008
Summer concert

June Crew with some remote help from Victor Crew, who, would you believe is swanning around off Scotland on his boat (again). Grateful thanks to all contributors. MORE please to 26 St Davids Drive, Broxbourne EN10 7LS or email junecrew@brox1.demon.co.uk

>> HCS Newsletter Number 92 (December 2006)

>> HCS Newsletter Number 91 (September 2006)

>> HCS Newsletter Number 90 (April 2006)

>> HCS Newsletter Number 89 (January 2006)