Selig sind

Well, folks, it's official. After a 3 year absence due to lack of funds, I am finally going to be singing at the Berkshire Choral Festival! I'll be there from July 9th to July 16, and the concert, on July 15th, will be Brahms' magnificent Ein Deutsches Requiem, which I've wanted to sing for ages. Admittedly, this was my second choice, after the Verdi Requiem, but since this was the 25th anniversary of BCF, the people who attended last year got first dibs and signed up then. Two friends of mine from the St. George's Choral Society are going for the Verdi Requiem week, conducted by the legendary curmudgeon Robert Page, under whom I sang Elijah in 2001*. My conductor will be John Alexander, Music Director of the Pacific Chorale. The name and group are familiar, but what they have actually done escapes me - I'm going to have to investigate recordings. Per Amazon they've done a few contemporary pieces like Richard Danielpour's Requiem, but not Brahms'. Actually, my third choice was the Mozart Requiem with a conductor I'm dying to work with, Jane Glover, but my priority is always works I haven't sung over works I have.

Das Grass ist Verdorret - The grounds of the Berkshire School, where the Choral Festival rehearses and performs. Here the choristers are all lined up for a concert.

I just love Brahms' vocal works. Brahms is for the alto voice what Puccini is for the soprano voice. His alto lines are often considerably more beautiful and interesting than the ones he wrote for soprano. When I first "sang" the Requiem - a runthrough at one of the many choral summer sings given in New York City - it felt so unbelievably right. I don't read music all that well and I certainly can't sight-sing (the reason I'm not in more "prestigious" choruses), but I knew exactly what was coming next - it wasn't predictable as much as totally natural and organic. I love the four Opus 17 songs for women's voices, horn, and harp , as well as the Nänie, almost as much. And one of these days I dream of being the soloist in the Alto Rhapsody. Maybe even the two songs for alto and viola...

And Berkshire, even without the singing, is an absolutely wonderful experience. The scenery is just drop-dead gorgeous (the above picture doesn't even remotely do it justice), although sometimes I wish we could be there in the fall when the foliage turns, but then the Berkshire School is in session. You can see stars - and even whole constellations! - at night, which you can't in New York City. There are field trips every day to places like the Norman Rockwell Museum and the Hancock Shaker Village, and we even go to Tanglewood on Friday nights (and this time it's a really great concert - James Levine conducting Guerrelieder!). They also have two voluntary classes a day on everything from the composer of the week to rounds to South African songs. The food is pretty good, too, although someone has to tell the kitchen that ice cream and singing usually don't mix.

The only drawback is that it's dorm living (although I've had single rooms in the years I've been there), and if you're not in the air conditioned dorm (which costs extra and apparently has very thin walls so you can hear everything you don't want to hear) you need to bring or rent a fan. I didn't find this a problem. Oh, and the last time I went, I had tons of mosquito bites on my feet, and no Lanacane. Witch hazel controlled the worst of it until I got to the bus station in Sheffield to go home and found some calamine lotion.

Because I'm under 40 and they desperately want "young people", I get a nice discount - a whole week will be only $500 (as opposed to about $800) plus cost of music (about $10) and transportation (probably about $40). Oh, yes, I'll have to buy a new white shirt and black skirt. I hope I can handle this and London at the same time.

They also have weeks at Canterbury Cathedral (if I'm lucky, maybe next year it will dovetail with something irresistable at Covent Garden - this year it was the Bach Saint John Passion which I will not touch with a 10-foot pole, even if they remove the anti-Semitic elements as some choruses do), and in Salzburg (which almost always coincide with the Jewish High Holy Days). Unfortunately, they no longer have weeks in Santa Fe, where I could have gone to the Santa Fe Opera and seen a spectacular sky, although I would have probably needed to get there early to acclimate to the altitude.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to this - and I wonder if the soloists will be anyone I'm familiar with?

* Then again, at least for the altos, Elijah is a very easy work - nothing musically difficult like, say, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis (which I've also sung at Berkshire). All you have to do is learn the notes and do what the conductor tells you to. As a matter of fact, Maestro Page said he was very impressed by how prepared the altos were! I imagine, though, for the Verdi Requiem, and for Honneger's Jeanne D'Arc de Bucher, which is where he got his reputation, the situation would be much different.