Post-canticulum
The big news: there were no trainwrecks. Not one. I heard a couple fluffs in the orchestra, and there may have been more I didn’t notice (can’t listen, must sing! can’t listen, must sing!), but the really wince-worthy stuff from rehearsal mostly got cleaned up.
I’m reserving judgment about the treble semichorus in the Holst—they were stuck up in the balcony, and the “hang time” for sound in that hall is considerable, so they probably weren’t as late as they sounded a couple of times. The middle-schoolers in the Chilcott were excellent, though; right in tune (which they, um, weren’t in the morning) and right together. Perfectly charming.
We batted the Chilcott out of the park; it sounded great. The Holst was a solid base hit, maybe even a double. I was concentrating too hard to get much of a global sense of the Duruflé, but nothing jumped out at me as being bad. I’m looking forward to the CD of the performance, and I usually cringe at listening to my own stuff.
We had one close call: conductor Doug accidentally tried to bring the tenors in a measure early for one of their big tenor-unison lines in the Duruflé. Bless ’em, they didn’t turn a hair, coming in at the correct spot all together. Not a single one fell for the false cue that I heard. Doug must be happy about that. It says a lot for how well he trained us.
(Me, I was all “crud, did I miscount?—no, no, I didn’t—wow, that was close! Go tenors!”)
As for me, I too fixed a couple-three things that I was fluffing as late as final dress rehearsal. (Got through the entire Libera Me without missing an entrance or fluffing a rhythm! Go me!) I did cut off one ending quite a bit too soon, and my voice betrayed me in the encore (I can suddenly and unexpectedly lose pitch if I’m trying to sing too loud, and, well, that’s exactly what I was doing), but nothing too horrible. In the encore, especially, there was so much racket on that stage you couldn’t have heard me with an ear trumpet.
The encore. Yeah. I haven’t talked about it much here (because, you know, surprise! and all), but… look, I cry at movies, get choked up at stuff I know perfectly well is manipulative, should probably have “SUCKER” tattooed on my forehead—but Joseph Martin’s “The Awakening” is too much bathos even for me. It’s smug, maudlin, self-congratulatory doggerel without any musical interest to rescue it. We sang it, I will allow, with what dignity it permitted, and it was a huge crowd-pleaser (which is really why it was included), but—yuck. Beneath us. Really.
Good crowd. Appreciative, and (from what I could see) really listening.
Audition for next season is a week from Tuesday. I’m looking forward to it!