Friday 16 March 2012

I can do it. No, I can't!! Well, maybe I can?

So the Concert South 100th concert is this Sunday. You know, the one where I have to sing the Mozart Alleluia. With all the runny bits and the high C at the end. The piece I have renamed not-so-affectionately as 'Short and Deadly'.

Rewind to Tuesday this week. I went and had a first practice with my accompanist. We ran through Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen. Fine - once we'd worked out the weird repeat markings in this particular version. We did 'Sweeter Sounds than Music Knows'. Nothing too terrible there. And then....the Alleluia. If singing this piece was the equivalent of cycling down a straight path between two beds of rose bushes, then by the end of the first runny bit you would have found me upside down, impaled on rose thorns, bleeding copiously with bits of bicycle strewn over the pathway. Not pretty. The high C was a yodel on C/C#. I bet even the Topp Twins couldn't manage that and I did it without even trying. Ha! 

Cue hyperventilation. And me explaining to the accompanist that it might really not be a great idea to repeat this scenario at an actual concert. Because really it would be a like a car crash you have to drive past where you don't want to look but you just can't help it. I said I would make a decision the following day after my singing lesson. 

Wednesday, lesson. (And an opportunity to coo at my teacher's brand new gorgeous little girl). Me: I just can't do the coloratura bits with that pearls-on-a-string technique-thingy!! Teacher: Well that's not a problem, these are essentially scales, they can be done legato. Me: Oh? really? .......

Half an hour later...♫♪ Aaaaaaa, a-a-le-e-lu-u-ia aaaaaaaaaaaa ♪♫ So maybe I really can do this! Me: OK but what about the hIgh yodel - I mean high C? I can do it if  I make a really narrow pathetic sound like this *makes narrow pathetic sound* but if I try and do it full voice I do this *yodels*. Teacher:  What's wrong with the first one? It will just ping out - don't forget you're in a Church which will help fill the sound out. Just don't put any welly on it and it will be fine. 

And so here we are, two days out from the concert and there is no.turning.back.  Stay tuned for the next instalment which will either be happily triumphant or strangely echo-y having been written from the depths of the hole I dug myself. 

1 comment:

  1. Waiting anxiously to hear that you made it past the rose bushes! Actually, I have no doubt that you will. Like a downhill skier, you've plotted your course with your coach, practiced, and from the bits we've managed to hear over the years, are incredibly good. Now for the razor sharp positive thinking. And you are supported by your world-wide fans, you know!! :)

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