Concert completed in Oostburg; Maggie and Malcolm back home

My concert in Oostburgh was quite a good one.  The Michael Haydn Requiem was quite satisfying, while the Ferdinand Schubert Requiem likely will not be included in my wish list of repeated works.  It wasn't bad, just not terribly interesting.  The concert also included a Joseph Haydn motet, the Insanae et vanae curae (Insane and stupid worries flood our mind), as well as an organ concerto.  The audience was quite pleased and the conductor was happy.  And the Dutch are prompt with payment: it has already appeared in my bank account.

view from the solo seats

a large interval to sing in the Schubert

But I must say that it was tiring.  The drive didn't look too long, around 125 kilometers, but lots of it was on smaller roads, and it was a torrential rainstorm for the two hours it took to get there.

Then we rehearsed our pieces once as soloists, then sang the whole thing again with the choir, then performed the concert!  I have rarely performed a previously unknown piece with the only rehearsal on the day itself, and that was a little stressful.

Afterwards I drove home, again through a torrential rainstorm, but this time at night.  So I was happy to find my bed afterwards.

One thing I should mention that surprised me when I first arrived in town: I was astonished to see that there were Canadian flags hanging everywhere!  It turns out that a Canadian regiment (the Queen's Own Rifles) liberated Oostburg as part of the Battle of the Schelde in 1944, and as this was the 75th anniversary, there were commemorative walking tours and pilgrimages.  I saw quite a few uniformed personnel walking around the town centre.  It's humbling to think of how the Dutch still remember the Liberation and are grateful to the soldiers from all countries, including Canada, who took part.

The next day I got up at a reasonable time to get to the airport for Maggie and Malcolm's flight to arrive from Vienna at around 11:30.  The plane landed safely, but while I was waiting I received a call from Maggie that they were still in Vienna, having been delayed on the Toronto leg of the journey.  So I drove home again (still raining), and came back in the evening (still raining) to pick them up after they caught the next flight, which required a side trip to Frankfurt.

In the end they landed safely and I was able to meet them and take Maggie and our luggage home, while Malcolm took a train up to Antwerp to attend a music concert with his classmates.  One bag didn't make it from Frankfurt, but we made a claim and it was delivered to Maggie's school last night.

They had a great time in Canada, although it was extremely busy.  Malcolm had arranged to meet with the Luthiers Grit Laskin, Linda Manzer, Peggy White, and our old friend Oskar Graf.  Definitely a great success.  As well Maggie and Malcolm had some time to do some odd jobs around the cottage that are really quite difficult for Hugh and Sheila, and they loved being at the cottage and visiting.  As well they even managed to meet with my parents, sisters and nephew in Belleville for a belated Thanksgiving dinner on their way back to Toronto.  Finally Malcolm went out for drinks with his old friend Nick Kaeghi, who is studying international relations at the University of Western Ontario.

Yesterday was a really challenging day: it was an added rehearsal for the Hello Dolly! cast, and I went into school at 8:00 with Maggie and spent a couple of hours in a practice room recording the individual tracks for the rest of the chorus numbers.  I was done by around 9:45 and then we had rehearsal until 16:00.

I was bone tired.  Some of the junior chorusters are really keen, but there are others who just won’t be quiet in the rehearsal and don’t know their words, which makes it very fustrating for everyone else.  Some of the senior altos are also pretty chatty during rehearsal, which makes me wonder why they are there.  As well I am a bit surprised that some of them don't know their words.  I am at the stage now where I should be refining the musical expression of the numbers, and instead I’m reciting text, which I have already been doing for a month.

But there are bright spots.  I'm happy to have managed to solve a problem in the Hello Dolly solo and ensemble number; the two singers who perform Dolly were having some issues with it being so low, and we tried transposing the track upwards, which causes other problems for the rest of the ensemble.  It has been bugging me for a while, and I was doing some research over the holiday into high-school aged singers, and read some articles that describe how most of today's young singers try to emulate pop sounds, and are not comfortable with their upper register, not because they don't have the notes but because the style for pop singers today is to sing down in the belty chest voice.

Yesterday I got the two Dollys alone and tested out singing it at the original pitch, but with them going up the octave, and the difference was remarkable!  Very exciting sounds and it will also eliminate the need for fiddling around with the key changes, which I can't easily do as we are using canned (pre-recorded) music.  I may yet drop it one tone to make it easier for the one singer of the two, and that will also help out the male chorus, as some of the tenor ensemble lines get pretty high.