The Gabrieli Choir
Tour account (English version)
The Gabrieli
Choir’s trip to England, April 2009
It started way
before the actual tour, when we bought our – rather expensive – plane tickets
to East Midlands, for a flight that the infamous
Ryanair finally cancelled about a month and a half before our departure.
Discarding our original plans we re-booked our plane tickets, this time with a
rival low-budget company, to London, thinking we were all settled. So we were –
for the way there. This is when we found out that the departure date of our
plane from Glasgow to Budapest, which would have originally left Prestwick
Airport after noon, was slightly brought forward– to 6 am. Having found out
that the bus trip from Carlisle to Glasgow Prestwick takes more than two hours,
we knew that our last
night will not be spent sleeping – for the wrong reasons, namely not as a
consequence of a well-earned night of celebration after our successful tour.
Though it does not strictly relate to the actual chronicle of our tour, I must mention the intense rehearsal period that preceded our trip. We rehearsed on Thursday evenings and sometimes whole Sunday afternoons, and took great pains (literally!) to perfect our German pronunciation and sense of baroque style in the choral movements of Bach’s John’s Passion. Then, we did our best to lose our German and switch over to our sophisticated British accents in the English repertoire – keeping an eye on style and tempo –, only to switch over to Hungarian and back again to English, in Robert White’s Five-part Lamentations – strongly recommended for those suffering of insomnia, as it is a virtually endless source of entertainment for passing long, sleepless hours.
No wonder that as soon as I checked in at the Budapest Airport I hit the sack. For once this had nothing to do with White, but with having had to work through the nights before – and I was not the only one to do so, as far as I know (we all hope that Luca’s hurriedly finished thesis will not be rejected J). The same might be the reason why I was among the few who did not grumble about the mini- or rather microbus that we were squeezed into (that we suspect was originally designed for transporting children) along the three-hour bus-trip from Luton to Sheffield – though the beers we bought at Luton and consumed before long might also have something to do with it. We hit Ranmoor – a wealthy suburb on the outskirts of Sheffield – around midnight, local time. Hosts and guests found each other in no time, and after a little chat – or in some cases a few bottles of wine – with our host-families, we finally turned in. We soon had to face our action- (and meal-)packed schedule, with a similar pattern for each day: meeting at church (”don’t forget concert-clothes!”), sightseeing, dress-rehearsal, supper (high tea? afternoon tea?), concert.
After breakfast on Thursday morning we deposited our stuff at the Church, and following a short acoustic rehearsal – and a shot of rum in the changing room to lift our spirits – we left for the Sheffield City Hall, just a few busstops away. We warmed up our vocal cords on the double decker, so that we wouldn’t flop in the presence of the Lord Mayor – technically a Lady, – who gave us a warm – and savoury – welcome, providing us with coffee, tea, various cookies and wonderfully soft arm-chairs. We thanked her in Estonian and Hungarian, singing two short pieces from our repertoire. Appreciated as it was by the Lord Mayor, our soothing performance (perhaps not soothing enough) was not so enthusiastically welcomed by the board of MPs next door. After our visit at the City Hall we had a few hours free to wander around the city. Few cathedrals, shops or pubs went unvisited, and beside savouring the typical tastes of England (like coffee at the local Starbucks J), some of us got a taste of the atmosphere of the more colourful streets of Sheffield, outside the City Centre.
Little as I remember about the following rehearsal, the memories of the supper after that are all the more vivid. Even now, weeks later I lick my chops when I think of the food that was waiting for us at the house of Mike, the harpsichord-maker – and secretary of the Abbeydale Singers. Cold meat, salads, Pavlova cake, yumm! Thanks to the daintymorsels, the joint concert of the two choirs started out in a rather elated atmosphere – or at least it would have, if some choir members had shown restraint and had not eaten just a bit more than necessary, as a result of which the beautiful harmonies were accompanied by faint moans and groans –, and the wine served in the break further elevated the good spirits of the two choirs and the audience – even though us choir members were not actually supposed to drink any. Another reason for this might be that the Abbeydale Singers did not adhere to a program strictly connected to Lent. After the concert we went to a nearby pub, where there was no sign of abstinence when it came to trying local beers, either, not to mention those popular, typically English triangular sandwiches. Here we sang jazz- and folksongs, and pieces of unknown genres (at least I could not define them) – making sure we were not within Richard’s hearing. Out of consideration for the reader I will not go into detail about the rest of the evening.
The next morning a sad – and slightly dizzy (= hung-over) – Gabrieli choir bade farewell to their host-families, and compressed into the infamous micro-bus. The winding roads of the Yorkshire hills put some to the test: the children were stirring, and so did Anna’s stomach, whereas Melinda tried, in vain, to keep out of the way of a drowsy Philip, powerless against gravity and centripetal force. After two stops – and a heavenly lamb-burger with mint – we arrived in Carlisle, around where Richard is from. Some of our obliging host-families greeted us at the enchanting Cathedral, and escorted us to the nearby Fratry, where we deposited our suitcases. After a guided tour through the Cathedral (the second smallest in England, established by augustan monks; part of its nave was broken down and used as building material for a fort in the course of cross-border fights; between the nave and the altar stretches one vast stained window; the Cathedral is actually pinkish, with several uneven walls due probably to the reconstructional works from different times) some of us listened to the evensong, as part of the – theoretically – optional program.
After a quick, light dinner in the underground passages of a great Italian Restaurant, we found ourselves singing Bach at the first joint rehearsal with the Abbey Singers. We were shaken up (or at least I was) by the tempi and articulation introduced by Jeremy Suter – conductor of the Abbey Singers –, which at places were slightly different than what Richárd used to take. We also had to realise that our efforts to achieve a believable German pronunciation were not all in vain – two days before the concert members of the other choir just started to have a feeling of ”fau”, ”sch” and other tricky word-final consonant clusters.
After the rehearsal we got acquainted with our new hosts, during the drive home. I must write a bit about the host-father of Zoli and myself, Keith Maclannon, who is the manager of the choir, a sportive bachelor who used to be a teacher of Latin and Greek, and could fit in all other sorts of stereotypes as well. We knew immediately that we were going to have a great time with him, and had no idea yet that the next day he would become our true master.
Saturday was relatively uneventful: rehearsal in the morning, then a bit of sightseeing in the city or in its neighbourhood – sadly the planned trip to Gretna Green by an Oldtimer was cancelled –, and in the evening everyone went their separate ways with their host-families. The best moment of our evening was when Zoli told our host about how he and others took a bus-trip all the way to Brampton Church and back, at exactly the same moment when our car pulled up to Brampton Church, and we had to realise that our host was actually living just a few minutes away from the place. Another great source for laughs were the Hungarian dialogues from the CD that belonged to Keith’s Teach Yourself Hungarian course. Zoli and I later discussed into great detail the one sentence that ruled them all: ”You women are only interested in our money.” I am seriously considering assigning an essay to my students with this very title.
That evening we had guests for dinner: Tusi, Zsuzsi and their hosts, Betty and Geoff, the lookalike of Donald Sutherland. And under ’we’ I mean Zoli and I, as having had enough of constantly being served by Keith, we tightened our aprons and got down to work. The enthusiasm with which we executed the slavish work of paring potatoes, cooking italian courgette-ragout and doing the dishes did not go unnoticed, and our host took great care to remark how content he was thereof. A few minutes – and sips of wine – later it was our turn to remark on the aristocratic manner in which he conducted the otherwise challenging procedure of laying the table. In other words, we entertained ourselves and each other, with or without guests.
On Sunday the choir only met at the rehearsal after lunch, where we were joined by the orchestra and the soloists. I could still not embrace Jeremy’s interpretation of the piece, and it gratified me – at least a bit – that one of the tempi in an already tricky choral fugue that just worked out on the rehearsal, proved to be fatally fast at the concert. About the following reception: no complaints there! Oversized tables laden with goodies, moving speeches, a lottery and merry exchanges of thoughts with our hosts.
After two seemingly uneventful days Monday held out the promise of a busy program. We spent the day at Keswick, the place Richárd spent his childhood years, where we travelled in a bus at least twice the size of the previous one. The schedule was as usual: unloading our stuff, sightseeing, tea, rehearsal, concert. Keswick is located on the bank of the picturesque Lake Derwent Water, with a miniature Stonehenge and a miniature Loch Ness Monster, on top of a hill and in the lake, respectively… All jokes aside, walking beside and sailing accross the lake reminded me of the famous Pendragon Legend by Antal Szerb. Nevertheless, even the memories of the gruesome, and nearly catastrophic adventures of the protagonist, János Bátky couldn’t keep me from hiking up the mountain, and while the others were sight-seeing, shopping or just passing time I took some prize panorama photos with which I intend to show off in the near future. Having taken the photos I walked all the way back to Crostwaith Church where we would have our concert that evening, not caring about the ticket I bought for the boat-trip back to Keswick. By now I was not the only one with visible signs of tiredness. It was not hard to perceive that others did not appreciate either having to rehearse our lengthy program with maximum concentration, on maximum volume. Richárd finally surrendered, and in return we thanked him with a really beautiful concert – no immodesty there. One of the most touching, unforgettable scenes was the moment when Richárd saluted his old piano teacher, who, herself, provided financial help to the choir.
On Tuesday we gave a lunchtime concert in the Carlisle Cathedral. A good number of people came to listen to our – slightly abridged – program, and fortunately only a few had to go back to work after fourty minutes. In this program, among English and Hungarian church music (such as Miklós Kocsár’s Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis), we introduced our audience to such choral works from the 20th century as Sík Sándor’s Te Deum by Zoltán Kodály, and we paid a compliment to the locals by singing pieces closely related to the region of Cumbria. After our lunchtime concert we took a last stroll in Carlisle, only to spend the rest of the afternoon trying to reduce the weight of our suitcases to only 15 kilos. Some people, having already explored the whole of Carlisle (considering that the city is no larger than Kaposvár in Hungary), borrowed the car of our charitable host, Keith, and drove all the way to the coast, with the help of Zoli (who had never before driven in England) and his GPS with the sexy lady’s voice. We spent our evening in a place called Contemporary Indian Restaurant (whatever that means), which was recommended by our hosts. I don’t know how contemporary we were, but we certainly had a good time. We started gathering our stuff around midnight, and shortly our spacious bus left for Glasgow Prestwick Airport, where the check-in for the flight back to Budapest opened – thanks to a passenger-friendly Ryanair – at 4 am. Luca and I bade tearful farewell to the rest of the group (except Richard, who was nowhere to be located), as our duties called us off to other places in Europe. Therefore I cannot report on the heart-smothering moments of returning home, either. And it may be for the better: my reader can now be certain that I only left out the most important details of our journey…
Although in this short report we caricatured the humorous and less successful moments of the tournee, we spent a really fantastic week in England – for everything special thanks to Richard!
Words by Dániel Végh. Original text recreated under the pretense of translating: Luca Kőszeghy. The webalbum which hosts the photos linked was created by our Katalin Varga.