Possibly The Best Music In The World

Well, there had to be some kind of reference to Carlsberg advertising, considering we were in Copenhagen. ('Carlsberg, possibly the best lager in the world'...)

But what brought me to wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen?  Brahms. Brahms and a smidgeon of Schubert.  And a (non music-) student orchestra that didn't play like (non music-) students, thanks to their excellent conductor, a very dear friend of mine.

Brahms with a mix of Sir Malcolm Sargent, I should say, as I got to sing Brahms in a wonderful new version (for mezzo-soprano) of Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs), originally written for voice and piano, in a wonderful full orchestration by the afore-mentioned Sargent.  So very lush and multi-dimensional!  

The smidgeon of Schubert was Berlioz's orchestration of Die Erlkönig.  I have a beautiful cd of Ann Sofie von Otter singing some of these orchestrations, and I was thrilled to find out the encore would be one of these glorious arrangements!  Needless to say, I found all five songs so very different to sing with orchestra than with piano.  Of course, you can still be intimate when singing with an orchestra, but I find it's such a different kind of intimacy.  Piano and voice is quite stark in many ways, but is also very present.  Just two people and their instruments creating expression and colour and their own little world.  The palette is much more full with an orchestra, and it is always fun (and challenging) to try and create equally vibrant tones with the voice.  (I suspect you can tell I've had more experience singing with orchestras and ensembles than with just piano!)  But, needless to say, any given piece, on any given day, with any given singer, using any given accompaniment will create a myriad of different performances.  It is, after all, what live music (to me) is all about.

Copenhagen is full to the gunwales with strangely out-of-place architecture.  Their city hall (Københavns Rådhus, pictured above) looks like a northern European version of an Italian Renaissance palazzo, slightly clunkier and not having quite the right glowing red brick.  And the inside is even stranger - walls, ceilings staircases all in 15th century style covered in tiles and trompe l'oeil of the early 20th century Art Deco period.  

And if that wasn't enough, there was the rather splendid World Clock - an astronomical clock designed by Jens Olsen at the beginning of last century.

But, as much as it would have been wonderful, wonderful, Copenhagen itself was not one of the places we were performing. 

There was intimacy of a different kind when we did our first concert, not in Denmark, but in Germany.  (I would have mentioned this before, but it didn't go with the title of the post!)  The lovely town of Münster played host to our fair company for a few days, and (apart from hellishly sleepless nights due to noisy incumbents of the same hotel) it was an interesting visit.  

The town itself is lovely - the centre looks very old indeed and is surrounded by wonderful churches, but in reality 90% of the old town was destroyed in WWII.  The old city has been rebuilt to look the way it did pre-war, and it is very charming, although slightly melancholy when you think of how old the buildings were before they were bombed.

We didn't, sadly, get to sing in any of these wonderful buildings, but instead were given the great lecture theatre of the university.  Complete with the acoustics of a taxidermied donkey.  The dusty and air-conditioned (and, strangely, central-heated) stuffy air of both backstage and front of house gave the impression that you were singing and breathing into an ancient velvet curtain, letting no sound resonate but instead smother it to death in a surprisingly efficient manner.  This is the kind of intimate sound all performers can do quite happily without...

But back to Denmark, where we had acoustics in cathedral-loads. 

Århus Domkirke was very generous with its sound.  Perhaps a bit too generous, but after Münster anything was delightful!  (And there was the added bonus of seeing the exterior of the rather amazing-looking theatre - found at the bottom of these five photos.)  I shall always remember Århus, however, not for being a pretty town with lovely architectural features, but for supplying me with possibly the finest cappuccino I think I've ever had.

Finally we arrived at the Messiaskirken in Charlottenlund, on the outskirts of Copenhagen, but do I have photographic evidence of this? No, because I caught a stomach bug and spent most of the time I wasn't singing, hovering around the only loo...  (And let it be noted that it was due to very greasy pizza, and not copious amounts of Carlsberg!) But Mister Google is, as always, most helpful...

I have to say that although it was quite small, it was, in comparison to the other places, happily oh-so-acoustically perfect!  And like the ending in all traditional fairy tales, the last of the three was the 'just-right' setting in the story of Goldi-Redlocks and the Three Venues.  

Possibly the worst pizza in the world, though...

ASC

aka Actual Singing Content.

basilique sainte marie-madeleine de vézelay

Or choral content to be precise.

But don't anyone ever tell you it's easier than solo work. Because it's not. Nope. Nuh-uh. Not in a million years.  You need an extra kind of confidence. It's not enough to know you can sing the music by yourself, you need to know that you can sing it with other people, be able to blend with other voices, not be put off by the others in your section, or be so scared that you're not pulling your weight, or are sounding crap, that you end up forgetting how your technique works. You almost need to be arrogant about it all.  It intrigues and confounds me!

But what better music to be intrigued and confounded by than the wonders that are the Requiem, and Mass in c minor, by WA Mozart, with Arsys Bourgogne, and the Camerata Salzburg.  Om nom nom!  (I auditioned last year - my first as mezzo/alto, so I was doubly pleased to take part!)

But enough of such inane twaddle - I know you really want to know about where we sang, not why, what, or how we sang!  ('Cos really, after the initial - ooh pretty music, and ooh - cool orchestra, the rest is all hard work, sweat, and tears!)

Arriving at Vézelay in Burgundy in 36c heat at 9pm wasn't my idea of fun, I have to admit, but after making a tour of the village, fell in love.  Not with the hills. No. (The small town is built on the summit of a hill.  The rehearsal venue and the basilica was at the top, my hotel was at the bottom.  Big hill.  Much sweat.)  But oh. Pretty. PRETTY!

Ruins.

Ancient buildings.

Picture-postcard views.

And then there was the Romanesque Basilica of Saint Mary Magdalene.

Absolutely stuffed to the gunwhales (or, should I say up to the pillars) with fabulous stone carving...

 feel free to click on the pictures for enlargments

The interior is lovely and light, with some nice stone striping on the arches.

And there was one example of stained glass.  (I had taken many more of the same window, but only discovered once I had arrived home that the reason none really came out was because the lens was rather needing cleaned!)

An exhausting 10 days, but totally worth it to be able to marvel over a lovely and ancient small town, and take part in some fabulous music-making.

Now, Where Was I...?: Dutch Things

the hague, 1600

In with the new, out with the old...  erm... well, no.  In with the old and out with the...  No.  Ach. See, the trouble with moving back to a place where you've lived previously is that you presume you already know about the area and the art, architecture, and other pretties that you're moving back to. Then you realise you the extent of your knowledge is based on either 12 year old memories of your very first visit, or blurred remembrances of places seen whilst whilst singing on tour.

Memory 1: Grote, of Sint JacobsKerk in Den Haag.  Dubbed 'The Place With The Longest Curtains In The World', The Great, or Saint James' Church was a highlight of my first visit to The Hague in 1998.  It seems it was only open a few days of the year, but we found it on one of those rare days.  I didn't remember anything of the interior except for a pair of the longest white curtains I had ever seen in my life, separating the choir from the rest of the church! Going back with my LS last month, I was pleasantly surprised - yes, the long curtains were there, now changed to a fetching mustard yellow colour, but there was so. much. more!

Well, yes, for me that did mostly mean mmmm-scrummy stained glass, but I have to say it was a beautiful space and very peaceful.

Of course, there are many more things to see in The Hague, and no doubt I shall be showing them to you in the future, but I had to include the visit to one of my favourite Dutch towns here: Delft.

delft, 1580

Memory 2: The Great Delft Tea-Shop Hunt.  Rumour has it that there's an absolutely amazing tea-shop in Delft that serves the most delicious scones with cream and jam that you've EVER tasted.  Yes, in Delft.  And on my numerous visits to this beautiful town, I have never found it.  I've found numerous shops selling antique Delft tiles and Delftware, even more numerous tourist shops selling modern (and somewhat tacky) 'Delft' ware, some lovely little cafés and restaurants, and several beautiful churches, but no sign of the Tea-Shop From Heaven.  But hey, the churches aren't really a booby prize!

oude kerk, delft

The Old Church of Delft is a charming, charming building, dating from the 13th century.  The most charming of its charming aspects has to be the leaning clock tower, which was begun in 1325.

And the stained glass wasn't bad, either!

Sister church to the Oude Kerk, is the Nieuwe Kerk.

Set at one end of the market square, and begun in the late 14th century, it's really only new in relation to the other church, though!  This is the church that's related mostly to the House of Orange, the reigning royal house of the Netherlands, and inside can be found the recently restored, and rather austere, tomb of Prince William of Orange (d. 1584).

And of course, there is a multitude of stained glass on offer, too...

I'm also a fan of antique maps.  Can you tell?!