Spode Music Week

ghoti, Benedict, and I have just got back from Spode Music Week, our first in its new home. We had a wonderful time although I at least am pretty tired, and ghoti is sleeping so I assume she is too ...

The course music was, on the choral side:

• Britten: Hymn to St. Cecilia
• Brahms: Fest- und Gedenksprüche
• Tallis: Puer natus est nobis (Mass setting)
• Davy: Salve Regina (sung at the end of Compline)

... plus a good deal of liturgical music. In orchestra:

• Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherezade (third movement)
• Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio espagnol (fifth movement)
• Tchaikovsky: Waltz from The Sleeping Beauty

The string orchestra had rather less preparation time :-), and played:

• Holst: St. Paul's Suite (Dargason)
• Grieg: Holberg Suite (Sarabande and Gavotte)
• Handel: a movement from a Concerto Grosso, though I've forgotten which one

We did a scratch performance of Show Boat, and I sang Schubert's An die Musik (accompanied by Charles) in the last night concert, which seemed to go reasonably well.

As usual, there was lots of impromptu/sight-read music-making, the highlights for me being a five-voice arrangement of the Londonderry Air, some rather good six-cellos work (which unfortunately I couldn't join because I picked up a stinking cold a couple of days from the end and had to retire to bed), and I'm told GSJ's nine-part recorder arrangement of Bohemian Rhapsody was amazing.

I doubt I'll have much of a voice for the next few days, but it was definitely worth it!