The Bach Festival Choir Triumphs and Delights at the
Dr. Phillips Center’s Residency Festival
The Inside Story as told by John Sinclair
Over the summer, Bach Festival Society Artistic Director and Conductor John Sinclair was deep into planning choir and orchestra rehearsals for a packed fall schedule when he got the call. A producer for the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts wished to know whether the Bach Festival Choir was available to be featured alongside London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for the Grand Finale concert of the Center’s highly anticipated week-long Residency Festival – ending on October 8, 2023 at Steinmetz Hall. What followed could aptly be called a wild ride. Bach Festival Society Executive Director Kathy Berlinsky asked Dr. Sinclair to share his thoughts about the experience.
KJB: First of all, congratulations!
By all accounts the performance was a stunning success and a major triumph for the Bach Festival Choir. Please talk about when you first got the call.
JVS: Thank you. And yes - a major triumph for the choir!
To answer your question, conversations began in mid-June. The DPC asked for about sixty minutes of music and sent me a playlist roughly twice that long from which to choose. I was also invited to make suggestions of my own. The musical selections were not confirmed until mid-August, which left us less than two months to prepare.
KJB: What was ultimately on the program?
JVS: We prepared twelve works, which is a lot, but it’s even more than a lot if you consider the length of some of those pieces. The Polovotsian Dances alone spans twelve minutes and Zadok the Priest consists of three movements over six minutes. In the end our choir mastered the entire sixty minutes of choral music - plus an encore we were asked to prepare, but subsequently learned was not programmed after all. I simply cannot say enough about the determination, dedication, and skill it took for our choir to get this done.
KJB: The Bach Festival Choir has performed with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Edwin Outwater before – during the grand opening celebration for Steinmetz Hall in January of 2022. Was this time different?
JVS: It was vastly different.
First, our previous collaboration was just one piece – a piece that most people with choral experience know – the final movement of Beethoven’s 9th. This second appearance, as we just discussed, involved twelve pieces, some of which were new to many of our singers.
Also, the January ’22 collaboration took place during a relatively slow time. We were able to focus primarily on preparing that one piece. In contrast, this concert took place exactly one week before what may be our most ambitious program this season - Sir Paul McCartney’s “Ecce cor Meum,” (Behold My Heart) - a beautiful, but long and challenging classical oratorio – also at Steinmetz Hall. Preparing for that alone would have been a major undertaking, but doing so in the midst of readying ourselves for the Royal Phil was a daunting task, to say the least. Again, I can’t say enough about the Bach Festival Choir.
KJB: Were the two experiences similar in any way?
JVS: Definitely – in one very important way. Preparing a choir for another conductor has unique and significant challenges. One must train the choir to be independent, yet flexible enough to adjust to the unexpected directions of a different conductor. You want your choir to be responsible for their entrances and releases, as well as tonal color and clarity, because you can’t be sure what cues, if any, they will receive during the performance. You must also have your choir learn the works at various tempi in order to be ready for whatever the other conductor asks. And finally, while you teach the style and some interpretation, you must be careful not to make it so rigid that the other conductor can’t add their own interpretive devices.
Conducting the final product myself is much easier and far more enjoyable for me but it was such a well-deserved honor for the Bach Festival Choir to be asked to sing with the RPO, and it was my privilege to prepare them.
KJB: Well, the result was a stunning performance that elicited cheers and a standing ovation from the audience and prompted Maestro Outwater to again proclaim the Bach Festival Choir "one of the best, by any measure, anywhere."
Before we close, do you have a funny or interesting anecdote you’d like to share?
JVS: I do. One of the pieces, Coronation Agnus Dei, was commissioned by King Charles III for his coronation. Composer Tarik O’Regan scored it for chorus and organ. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra commissioned a second version, scored for chorus and orchestra. The documentation for that second version states that it was “. . .first performed on 8 October 2023 by the Bach Festival Choir and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra . . .”
A person unfamiliar with the dual commissions might reasonably conclude that the Coronation Agnus Dei composed for the King’s coronation on May 6, 2023, was first performed on October 8, 2023!
