Westminster Trip Days 9 & 10

June 22, 2008 – 14:02 Local Time

Bach was amazing!!! That church is simply the most beautiful place in which I have ever had the pleasure to sing. It’s an 800 year old building that’s the size of a small town, haha! Seriously, this building is probably two football fields in length and half a field in width. (I haven’t looked up the dimensions – I’m writing this on a bus). So, let’s start at the beginning of yesterday, shall we?





We woke up at 7:30 for showering and breakfast, and then got on the buses by 9am. Much to my wallet’s chagrin, the next time period was merely to go to a mall for a little over two hours. Wow…this was, yet again, a huge place to shop. Nathan was able to replace his black shoes that had fallen victim to that first little café in Prague, and we also found some really fantastic clothing in some other places. After this time, we all came back to the hotel and had lunch.
At 1:30pm the Bach singers shuttled over to the Dom (main cathedral of Magdeburg) for our afternoon rehearsals with the Domchor (Dom choir) and the orchestra. The choir rehearsed (with John Semingson conducting) for about an hour, and then took a break for thirty minutes. At 3:30, we met with the orchestra for a straight run-through of the Bach. This was the only opportunity for the soloists to sing in the space – a somewhat intimidating experience for someone like me who has never sung over here. However, the most intimidating part of the whole deal was singing German for German people! I mean, I can sing Bach and Telemann all day back in the States, and a vast majority of the people who hear it won’t know whether it was pronounced accurately or not. Over here though, it’s gotta be right! They know what you’re saying, and if you say something wrong, they’ll flat-out tell you – an experience which shocked a great many of the Westminster singers. My voice was not cooperating with me for the rehearsal! All my low notes had decided to take their leave of me, and I was starting to get VERY worried about singing over the orchestra, especially since my line was frequently doubled by the oboe. So, I decided right then to not sing much of anything until the performance, in the hopes that something would kick in and start to work. After the Bach rehearsal, the Domchor rehearsed the Haydn mass that they were to perform, and we checked a few places in the pieces that we would be singing.









Finally, the hour was here for the performance! (This is something I have anticipated for almost nine months at this point, so try to bear with my enthusiasm, haha!) Just before the concert, I had a HUGE wave of nervousness, but most of this was due to the less-than-acceptable behavior of my voice during the rehearsal. Once I calmed down and realized that things would probably be ok with a couple of hours’ rest, the nerves subsided greatly. The concert began at 6pm with the Domchor and their Haydn. This was followed by Westminster’s 25-minute portion (a few selections from each of our sections of music). The last part of the concert was indeed the Bach Cantata No. 80 Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (A mighty fortress is our God, in case I’ve forgotten to mention that). The opening (and extremely long) chorale went fairly well, but we rediscovered how very difficult it is to stay in tempo on contrapuntal music while singing in a hall that has a nine-second reverberation! The second movement was the duet between me and the bass. His voice was quite nice on everything else he sang that night, but this duet requires him to move rather quickly, and he (sadly) fell a little short. However, praise Jesus, my voice came back! I think that it went about as well as I could have hoped, and I will remember my European debut quite fondly. The rest of the movements came off quite well, including Nicole’s aria, and the applause was quite raucous, so I think all of us were very pleased. One minor disappointment was that neither Nicole’s name nor my own was listed on the program. It’s not a huge deal, but it would have been nice to have something tangible (other than photos) to prove that we were there to sing.





After the Bach, it was time to celebrate! We were invited into the quite spacious courtyard of the Dom for wine, beer and juice a-plenty. And plenty we had! At my last count there were two beers and a glass of wine, and having decided against eating lunch, this was more fun that it had a right to be! *grin* We mingled some with the German singers (a good number of which were, in fact, British) and had a great time. However, pretty soon it became necessary to take in some food, so eight of us headed off to a pub of sorts. There we had some excellent Schnitzel and more beer (two more for me), haha! At that point, it was time to pass out, so we all hopped in two separate cabs and made our way back to the hotel. We got there at 11:24pm, and I think I was asleep by 11:30 – fortunately having remembered to remove my contacts and set an alarm! This is, of course, the reason I didn’t write last night.





This morning, we had to be out the door, packed and loaded up, by 8:30am. After a rather high-BAC night, this was a bit of a challenge, but we all made it. The reason for the early hour was that we were to be the choir-in-residence for the Dom this morning. It was a lovely, rather simple, Lutheran service – all in German, of course. We sang three pieces (Introit, Offertory and Communion) while also fighting our way through the Evangeliches Gesangbuch (Evangelical Songbook). Sight-reading tunes we didn’t know, reading unfamiliar German, and doing this when the text is printed in prose form below the music (not in-between each line) was quite a feat, and I don’t feel that it was one which we accomplished with any degree of success. Oh well, things were fine in the long run. The Domorgelspieler (Dom organist) was Barry Jordan, a Brit who has relocated to this beautiful church in northeastern Germany. He was a beast on their brand-new organ, and was not in any way afraid of pushing down a lot of keys at once, and allowing the clash to manifest itself in that cavernous sanctuary. Apparently, he knows Murray back home – small world, eh?





After church, we returned to the same mall from yesterday for lunch. Four of us ate at a café on the upper floor, and in barely enough time to make it back to the bus. (Having to run around and find an ATM was not very time-effective.) Nothing else in the mall was open besides food, so it was really peaceful, which was nice. At 1:30pm we boarded the buses again and departed for Berlin. We’re still on the road, and will likely arrive there in about an hour. I’ll hopefully write more tonight (about our bus tour) and post this, provided that internet isn’t an issue at this hotel.



The rest of our time here is in Berlin, so it should be a lot of fun. No more concerts, so rest isn’t as much an issue – I’m fairly certain that means the 20-somethings will be making the most of this city! I’m excited, but a little worried that it will take me a week to recover once we get home, haha. More later, I hope! ~AJR

[21:40]
*Ok, so there wasn’t much more to add. Just walking around and dinner – tour is tomorrow! Goodnight!!