Christmas Concert - Aberdeen - 2007/12/31 17:39
When is an orchestral concert not an orchestral concert? Aberdeen's Christmas Concert! We were treated to a very "slight" programme which had to be "padded out" by Christopher Bell who was suffering that evening from a bout of verbal diarrhoea. He talked incessantly and encouraged the audience to sing or (much worse!) clap at every opportunity.
The second half of the programme only really consisted of Leroy Anderson's "Christmas Festival" and "Sleigh Ride" plus the carol "Gaudete". Even the "Sleigh Ride" was drowned out by excessive clapping after the audience was urged so to do. The rest of the programme? Five carols! We were taught to "suck eggs" by being taken through three of them line by line. After prolonged and exasperating repartee before "Go where I send thee" we were then informed that it didn't much matter whether we could sing the verse or not - the "Changed Voices" would sing the verses themselves!!!! That's one way of filling in the time that should have been devoted to the orchestral music which, I should imagine, most of the audience had come along to hear. It seems to me that quality was sacrificed to a bout of fund-raising - five carols to be sung by the audience and the excuse for the conductor to urge before the interval that we should go and buy more programmes. Even at a Christmas Concert I should imagine that people go to hear music; not the prattlings of an obviously otherwise talented chorus-master and conductor. In my own opinion, change is urgently required to bring credibility to what is, after all, supposed to be another orchestral concert given by a National Orchestra.
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