Posts Tagged “Guildford Cathedral”

Guildford Cathedral v England

4 Commentsby Juliette  |  06.15.10  |  Latest News, Performances, Record Producing

Desperately holding in my tummy after an enormous bowl of pasta for lunch...

Glad to report that the Elgar went well and despite it being the same evening as the 1st England game (bet someone was in trouble for scheduling that one), we still seemed to be pretty well sold out. Guildford Cathedral doesn’t have a great acoustic for a piece like the Music Makers; everything quickly becomes a big wash of sound and Elgar’s choral works tend to be very densely scored, particularly for me as a mezzo when he probably had a contralto in mind (indeed the wonderful English contralto, Muriel Foster gave the 1st performance).

We met Julian Lloyd Webber for lunch last Friday to discuss his forthcoming 60th Birthday celebrations. I have to say, he looks 10 years younger than that and with no obvious signs of any botox! We also met his charming wife (no.4) who we’ll hopefully be recording with Julian in a duet to go on a special celebratory CD next spring. It was by some very strange coincidence that I had seen him on Cbeebies earlier that morning playing the Elgar Cello Concerto surrounded by a More »

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The Music Makers by Elgar

2 Commentsby Juliette  |  06.02.10  |  Latest News, Performances

Full steam ahead this week with Elgar’s Music Makers which I’m singing in about 10 days time at Guildford Cathedral. I simply adore singing Elgar so it doesn’t really feel like work having to practice it. It quotes lots of his other works such as Sea Pictures, The Dream of Gerontius, the Violin Concerto and of course, Nimrod – all of which are huge favourites of mine but the vast majority of the work is new. Elgar wrote to Ernest Newman about his composition:

“Please do not insist on the extent of the quotations” and “they form a very small part of the work”

The poem itself often gets criticised as not worthy of Elgar’s music and I have to say I have been struggling with some of it but it’s growing on me. It clearly had huge significance for Elgar. The first line begins: More »

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