I was back in my old alma mater yesterday, King’s College Cambridge, singing in the Chapel. I think I may have finally conquered the fear that overwhelms me whenever I start to sing in the place, but I’m not sure. It’s a fear rooted in my first ever experience of singing under it’s famous fan-vaulted ceiling.
It was September 1975 and I was seventeen. I had applied for a Choral Scholarship to King’s which, if I was successful, would get me a place in the choir the following academic year. I was desperate to get into King’s. Nowhere else would do, but the system was that you listed in order of preference which other colleges you would also like to consider. Such was the rivalry between King’s and St John’s that if you put either of them second you could forget it altogether. They weren’t prepared to be anybody’s back-up. …
I had my first full “In Tune” experience today. For those who don’t know, it’s a two hour show on Radio 3, the BBC’s classical radio channel, which highlights concerts and musical events which are coming up in the music calendar. Every day they have some guests who perform live in the studio.
I say my full experience because I have been on the show before but then all I had to do was chat about the St Matthew Passion from a studio in Bath. We were promoting a performance with The Bach Choir and luckily they already had a tape of a broadcast performance we had done a couple of years beforehand. I sat alone at the other end of an ISDN line while in Broadcasting House in London Sean Rafferty, the host, fired me questions over the ether and we listened to bits of the tape.…
A story Bob Tear told about himself: Bob sang the Verdi Requiem only once in his life, in unusual circumstances, when he was quite young. “Once was enough, love.” Bernstein was conducting it at the Royal Albert Hall and Carlo Bergonzi was due to be the tenor soloist but fell ill. Bob was called in…