Tonight we (the Cape Town Philharmonia Choir) performed Rossini's Stabat Mater with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra. The soloists were Nozuko Teto, soprano; Monika Voysey, mezzo soprano; Willem Bester, tenor and Patrick Tikolo, bass.
To start with, for the soloists, the piece is a difficult one. There's lots of chromaticism and some intricate syncopation, not to mention the a capella quartet in the eighth movement. So, the fact that none of them were really up to the task isn't too big a deal, but the reality is that they were not that great.
The conductor for the evening was Arjan Tien, a dutch fellow, and I actually really liked him. He was good to work with in rehearsals. I'm pretty picky with my conductors, but Maestro Tien was top notch, really passionate about the work and good humoured about his criticisms.
The choir itself did fine, but the basses were less than good on our solo a capella entry in the 5th movement, even though we cheated and got the note before-hand. But other than a few hiccups of that sort, our over-all performance was fine, and our a capella movement went fine (which I was the most nervous about), so I was satisfied with that.
The Philharmonic Orchestra was also fine, but they didn't seem to really respond to the passion that they were getting from Maestro Tien. During rehearsals he was often asking for more passion, more life, but in the end it didn't really come across so effectively as I wanted it to.
Anyway, that's my take, apparently I'm an critic now.
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