The Colchester Bach Choir was directed by Patrick McCarthy
Patrick was quite a famous singer in the late 1970s when he was at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in music college in London then located at Blackfriars and now located at the Milton Court near the Barbican Centre in London. He attended a performance of Carmina Burana by Karl Orf in 1974 I think.
Unfortunately the incumbent tenor fell mortally ill during the performance and it prevented him from finishing it. So, the conductor at the Royal Albert Hall opened the floor to anyone else in the audience who knew the part who could take it over and finish it off for him and he stepped up to the mark having just studied it by sheer coincidence at college. He did a good job and got on live TV for it and they let him work as a freelancer for the Royal Opera House and then he got his first year AGSM diploma and then went aborad to try and get to sing Wagner over there which he loved. He got on a Wagnerain tenor’s course and completed that but then was fast becoming a father and needed a steady income from working as a teacher rather than applying to sing with Hans Knappertbusch and Hans Hotter at Wuppertaler Bühnen that he wanted to do personally. Instead he came back and got a job as a singer tutor at the the flourishing Colchester Institute with ambitions to become a conservatoire. I did my Grade 8 singing with him in my year off, and passed at 19.
Colchester Bach Choir’s Performance of the Bach St Matthew Passion
Colchester Bach Choir was the choir he formed in homage to his affection for the music system he encountered in Germany most likely which is something we share as we both studied there.
I think it was in 1997 that I sang the Bach St Matthew Passion for the first time with his concert choir and his mates from the Guildhall in the 1970s along with local musician that had a reputation.
We rehearsed in the fleece in Boxford which is a pub in Suffolk famous for its Jazz evenings or was then .
The have a rehearsal room above the pub and you can all go down for lunch
We sang it on just 2 rehearsals and I’d never done it before when I did it in Germany we did it in a lot more detail but it was fun to sing it with them in St Botolphs Church in Colchester I was only young. I have a long standing affection for this piece as my professor at Cologne Conservatoire Wuppertal Campus was a famous recording artist of it. This was my first encounter with it so this is her singing Ich will dir mein Herze Schenken from Part One I want to give you my heart. it’s one of the livelist and happiest numbers in it as Barbara Schlick interprets it.
It’s only got 491 views now but it’s one fo the most seminal recordings of it the 1984 recording with Philippe Herreweghe the Dutchman conducting, Rene Jacobs on the countertenor, Peter Kooy, and Howard Crook. There is a tenor aria Geduld Geduld (Patience, Patience) and the bass aria Gebt Mir Meinen Jesum Wieder (Give me my Jesus back) which I have a got at sometimes.
Spem in Allium by Thomas Tallis
Spem in Allium on the other hand is a unique piece of English renaissance choral music to rival Allegri’s Miserere as the most complete piece of Renaissance polyphony. He was the first person to write for a whole orchestra of vocal parts 40 in total. An almost unique feat in musical history. It’s only about 10 minutes long and he creates an almost orchestral like texture with the voice parts.
I call it ‘the monster madrigal’ because of it’s huge vocal score which is like a full conductor’s orchestral score. and very strange to hold in the hand as a chorister you can hardly see over the top. It is actually a Anthem written in Latin or Motet as we call them in choral music.
It has an unbelievable sound; as if he really believed in God’s presence being real in his life in the way the light filtered down through the stained glass windows of his church and onto the alter.
We perfromed it in the gallery at St Botolph’s Church in Colchester again, this time using the whole of the length of the gallery on all four sides to create a natural quadraphonic sound space.
Enjoy this performance of it by The Tallis Scholars it is one of the finest recordings of the piece and it’s undulating texture.
Dovercourt Choral Society Concert
I also performed an assortment of Early part songs by John Dowland amongst others with Dovercourt choral Society in Harwich in North Essex which he also conducted in St Nicholas Church in the town centre.