The Choir - Sunday 19th - Nigel Short....

[ardcarp]

...on Russian Choral Music.

Choir director Nigel Short explores the challenges of Russian music for British choirs.

(Something to do with finding a couple of basses who can sing low? Maybe deciphering St Cyril's hieroglyphs?)

[DracoM]

Do hear some echt-Russian stuff as well as Brit ensembles?

[EnemyoftheStoat]

...on Russian Choral Music.

Choir director Nigel Short explores the challenges of Russian music for British choirs.

(Something to do with finding a couple of basses who can sing low? Maybe deciphering St Cyril's hieroglyphs?)

Well, having an excellent language coach such as Xenia de Berners (who features in the broadcast) is a great advantage - as is a good transliteration of the text, which is not always a given. Second-guessing the broadcast, I'd imagine that vowel colour will feature highly; there are more subtle challenges than that of a few bass notes - and don't assume that Russian choirs automatically have these on tap.

There's always the critic's standard criticism with a British choir - that it "didn't really sound Russian". My riposte to that: when you hear a British band playing Russian repertoire, do you always complain that it doesn't really sound Russian?

[Simon Biazeck]

Well, having an excellent language coach such as Xenia de Berners (who features in the broadcast) is a great advantage - as is a good transliteration of the text, which is not always a given.

Xenia is brilliant and will certainly insist on traditional Church Slavonic, as I discovered when coached by her! e.g. Bogoroditse Dyevo - those two first o's are dark (as all vowels in Church Slavonic) unlike secular Russian where they are pronounced as "a". (A slap on the wrist here for Mr Rutter and OUP's European Sacred Music ed. of the Rachmaninov setting which gets that stupendously WRONG!) Russian is a wonderful language to sing and will open up the voice if coached properly, but its natural resonance is so far away from English that Brit choirs, however brilliant, are going to struggle to make it sound truly idiomatic. Hidden diphthongs and the guttural "l" (which everyone thinks they can do, but can't; the tongue mustn't touch the teeth!) are just two of a number of pitfalls. I never hear enough real HUNGER in most non-Russian performances. To me, professionals and undergraduates alike sound too well fed and rather self-satisfied and amateurs lack colour and resonance, but I hope to be proved wrong here! It looks like a very satisfying programme!

[ardcarp]

Simon B. That's a most detailed post. The danger is that a choir (maybe a very good one but without enough rehearsal time) may be deterred from doing the Russian repertoire for fear of falling at the pronunciation hurdle. Many of us have done the Rach Vespers and enjoyed trying to mimic (that's all we can do) a genuine Russian sound. We had an Orthodox priest as a coach once (he told me that I sounded like someone from East of the Urals) but in any rehearsal only so much time can be spent on non-musical matters. In short it would be a shame not to have a go for rear of getting it wrong. Hope Nigel Short's programme will be encouraging!

[Simon Biazeck]

Please understand, there is no censure here, it certainly doesn't stop me! And in any case, I really don't think anyone is going to be deterred from having a go - I didn't say that - why should they be? As a professional singer I understand all the challenges and joys of trying to get the best out of Russian rep.

[Miles Coverdale]

I think Russian is one of those languages where it is nigh-on impossible for non-native speakers to sound convincing in choral performance. For example, I have never heard an English choir that can sound anything remotely like this.

[ardcarp]

No indeed, MC, but that was a somewhat atypical piece, composed solely around a basso profundo. More typical would be:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIxQ_B3Wpzg

...and the thing which is hard for us to get to grips with is is the full, rich sound and the highly emotionally charged delivery with a wide dynamic range and occasional portamenti. Deep bassess can be found (we have 2 astonishing ones in a choir I'm associated with) but there is more to it than that.

[Miles Coverdale]

I don't agree that that piece is composed solely around the low bass part, and I'm well aware that there is more to singing Russian music than having some good low basses. My point is that English people singing in Russian, however well coached in the language, simply don't sound Russian.

[DracoM]

SO frustrating!!! OK, we're on;y half way through the prog, but.......

The Russian lady kept NOT giving examples of the changes she wanted to hear between Brit / Russian choirs, merely saying theere were differences and difficulties - OK she talked about mamma / momma, but that was IT!! Why on earth did she not give us a string examples of how vowels and consonants SHOULD be sung?? She talked about transliteration, but gave no examples e.g. how three cyrillics = five transliterated. Exasperating! And I'm only half way through the programme! Would have been good to hear a proper Russian choir singing bits of the stuff Tenebrae sang, just in extract, and for the Russian lady to do a break-down of the differences. Grrr! Radio can do this so brilliantly, so why did they not do it?

And why ON EARTH did we have Parry, Britten, Potts et al in a programme advertised and eagerly anticipated RUSSIAN edition. Yes, lovely stuff in its own right, of course, but.......??

AND Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb, exquisite, one of my very favourites, but - erm and ahem......did nobody notice the anthem in the New College's CE upcoming on 22nd May? So twice in four days?

I know it may not be obvious from the above, BUT actually, I genuinely liked that programme a lot. It just wasn't quite what had been advertised. The Parry was a revelation.

[ardcarp]

It certainly didn't do what it said on the tin. And indeed, I would have loved to hear Xenia giving us a whole load of Russian; all we seemed to get from either was the expression 'dark vowels' about a hundred times.

That said, and having got over thwarted expectation, it was a really enjoyable programme. Nigel Short had a lovely presenting voice and style. He ought surely to be snapped up as a sort of male 'Catherine Bott' though that probably wouldn't fit in with Roger Wright's master plan.

Whilst the programme rather lacked a master plan, the extracts chosen, and their performers, were truly excellent. I had forgotten that lovely performance, with timps, of Rejoice in the Lamb by Ledger at King's. And Parry's Lord Let me know mine end was superb. The Pott piece apparently reminded NS of Britten's regard for the legacy of English polyphony. It reminded me more of Tippett's....in particular Plebs Angelica; not in its harmonic language, but in its weaving of parts.