Without me

My choir has been learning Elgar's The Apostles since January. With my long trips away I have missed a lot of rehearsals but I was confident that if I went to this week's three intensive rehearsals I could catch up. But I couldn't get to Wednesday evening's and had to accept that I wouldn't be ready in time for the concert. I skipped yesterday's rehearsal and when I 'should' have been at today's I was on my hands and knees in the garden, laboriously, weed by weed, clay lump by clay lump, (and yes, brick by brick) coaxing the garden towards what I hope it will one day look like.

For the first time in my 15+ years of being in the choir I went to the concert to sit in the audience.

I'm not fond of Elgar's choral music and usually his appallingly chosen words stick in my mouth. But the words of The Apostles are much more fluid and expressive (than, say, the ghastly, Music Makers) and the way he has set one soloist's words against those of another soloist or against the choir adds greatly to the meaning and conflicting emotion. Elgar's focus in the story of Jesus's followers is, unusually, on the 'low-lifes', Mary Magdalene and Judas, and he makes them both very human and understandable. There is also a very moving section at Golgotha with Peter denying he knew Jesus then his anguish as he reflected on what he'd done. I have never before heard this over-worn story told in a way that engaged my emotions. I didn't enjoy all the music (though I was singing along in my head to the bits I knew) but a couple of charged moments when everyone is singing made me hold my breath.

Very well done you lot. Wish I'd been in that there gap up at the back.

Bad, low-light picture (and I think my camera needs a service) but this is for my record.