Brott pågår. Var god stör.

Halle: Day Three  Day One  Day Two

Alarm at 8:30 again, but this time no whiskey so I was in annoying good spirits.  I think the others in the choir wanted me to feel worse so they could enjoy it.  I’m not even sorry.

Dress rehearsal was at 10:30, this time with all the soloists, and we ran through the entire work, start to finish, including Hallelujah, which pretty much brought the house down.  After that we were free until we had to be back for the concert, umm, sometime.

This festival was plagued by a lack of information in English.  Everything was clearly announced questions were answered in German, but getting answers in English was difficult.  I’ve been spoiled with Sweden’s consistently bilingual attitude; they know that people don’t speak Swedish, but the same assumption wasn’t made in Germany, despite having choirs from Ireland, Japan and South Africa.  Most Swedes learn German in school but not really enough to help any of them here.  We asked until we found out when we were due back.

After rehearsal was when we turned in our candy, too.  Apparently no one had ever thought to provide snacks  during the intermission of the three-and-a-half hour long concert before, so our choir each took along a box of chocolates to be made available to the choir, orchestra and audience, along with perfunctory cups of water.

I went back to the hotel sometime after 2pm and slept until it was time to get ready for the concert, which started at 7:30, hence the lack of photos from Saturday.

The concert went perfectly.  400 people belting out the Hallelujah chorus are a force to be reckoned with.  We did it again after the concert was over.  The conductor pulled a boy out of the choir to conduct, and the choir were given instructions to raise their hands every time they sang the word Hallelujah in order to help the audience count how many times we did it.  Great fun, and I’ll be getting the CD in about a month.

I had been assured by several festival veterans that the post-concert party was not to be missed and they were right.  It got started at about 11:30 and kept going all night.  Everyone sang.  The Swedish choir did a bunch of folk songs (I didn’t know any of them so I just tried to look pleased) and the Irish and  German choirs were also well-represented.  The soprano soloist, Wendy Waller, came by to thank us, saying she’d been praying for 15 years to be asked to sing The Messiah and couldn’t imagine a better choir to perform it with.

I think the solos started sometime around 2am, when enough people had gone home to allow the remaining to sort of bunch around the piano, and everyone had gotten enough alcohol in them to make them brave.  I was the only one from our choir that sang a solo, a repeat of Hallelujah to defend my reputation.  People sang along, there was applause, it was lovely.  Sometime around 4am I did Anthem from Chess as well, but in Swedish.  The “virgin award” was won by a guy named Paul who sang The Island.  No, he was not Paul Brady.  A German guy did Jar of Hearts and two of the altos picked out harmonies even though they’d never heard the song before.  There was Simon and Garfunkel, more Beatles, a bunch of musical songs and standards and we left at 4:30 in the morning.