Mastersingers in Barcelona — 2005

    Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Concert at La Garriga

This day began for most of us with a rehearsal from 9:30 until noon.  It was an opportunity to work on some of the new pieces we wanted to add to our concert repertoire.  And indeed, several pieces rehearsed this morning together for the first time were performed this evening.  After rehearsal, most of us scattered to make the most of the 6 hours of free time before we had to assemble for the bus trip to our concert venue.

La Garriga is a town of some 13,000 in the foothills about 40 km northwest of Malgrat de Mar and about the same distance northeast of Barcelona.  Underground springs feed its numerous health resorts.  Our concert there was originally scheduled to begin at 10:30 p.m., but the time was moved up to 8:30 and the intermission was cancelled.  (Our hosts were afraid we’d lose our audience if there were an intermission.)

The concert venue was a theater “complex” that included a bar, meeting rooms, and a quaint little theater that seated about 300 people.  On our arrival, we went to the bar area where we had another of those bag lunches from the hotel (the less said about them, the better).  Then we went to the theater for a brief warm-up and to experience the acoustics before starting our program.

Immediately after this, we took seats in the audience, joining the roughly 150 people there, and the program began with 3 pieces performed by the local men's choir, Societat Coral L’Aliança.  Perhaps we were a little surprised that this group of 25 or so senior citizens sang their Catalonian repertoire quite well.

Our program began with the rousing “All That Hath Life and Breath,” and it seemed to galvanize the audience.  Next was de Victoria’s (a 16^th century Spanish composer) “O Vos Omnes.”  We nearly lost our director on this one.  The performance of this piece, which spanned the singing career of many of us, including Bruce, was so transcendent, that Bruce seemed on the verge of losing control of his emotions.  (And seeing his reaction, many of us were similarly moved.)  We tried not to think too much about Bruce’s oft-used aphorism, “Show me a man without tears, and I’ll show you a man without a soul.”  Somehow, we got through the piece.

Next, was Pablo Casal’s (a Barcelona native) setting of the same text, “O Vos Omnes,” followed by “Ave Maria” and “Salmo 150.”  All this music was warmly received by the audience, and we had warm thoughts about how intelligent and refined they were.  But not too refined to enjoy the rest of our program:  Jamaica Farewell, Kalinka*, Kro Kro Hinh Hinh*, Switzer Boy, Roberta Lee, Ain’t Got Time to Die (this time with Zack Halop as soloist), This Train*, Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, Steal Away*, and Vive l’Amour.   This was our first performance of the Casals “O Vos Omnes,” as well as the starred pieces.  “Kro Kro Hinh Hinh” was particularly dicey because it is a solo chant with chorus response in the Twi language spoken in Ghana.  As soloist, John Messenger performed valiantly, and Bruce tried to give all the complex cues to both soloist and chorus.  Amazingly, it all came together perfectly, though it felt a bit like walking on the roof ledge of a ten-story building.

We ended the concert as we had done at the Palau on Sunday night.  Bruce announced the “gift,” and we started “Els Segadors,” and the audience went crazy.  The emotion both in the audience and on stage may not have been quite as intense as it was Sunday night, but it came close.  Afterwards there were free beers and cokes in the bar, with a lot of informal mixing with the host choir and the audience.  Among the many enthusiastic comments we heard was the observation that they had seen many foreign singing groups perform at La Garriga, but that ours was the best by far.  After about 20 or 30 minutes of this “afterglow,” we loaded onto our busses and returned to Malgrat de Mar.