By Murray Hipkin, NLC Musical Director, the day after our November 2024 concert
Yesterday’s NLC concert will be indelibly stamped on my brain for a good while yet. Maybe not entirely for the reasons I’d hoped, although (spoiler alert) it ended splendidly. But because of Storm Bert. While we were setting up we had reports of a power outage very nearby, and when the church lighting started flickering like something out of Harry Potter I did start to get a bit twitchy. But the rehearsal began as scheduled, and we managed twenty glorious minutes of Duruflé before we lost the organ about two bars before our distinguished baritone soloist was due to open his mouth for the first time. The lights stayed on, funnily enough, but there was nothing but gentle wheezing from one of the main stars of the show. And I don’t mean the amazing Jim Cleverton (whose commute to the gig, incidentally, had involved a zebra crossing and about 20m of pavement.) The church piano (a very decent full-size Boston) was stashed away out of sight behind the choir staging, and we weren’t allowed to move it, but we managed to set up the cctv and a mic and continued. It wasn’t the same though…
Photo credit: Tim Lutton
The prediction for power restoration was some time after 6pm, so at about 4.40pm I sent the choir home with a request to watch their email and be prepared to come back at 6.30pm. Sod’s law prevailed, of course, and about five minutes after they’d gone, it came back on. But had the organ’s memory been wiped? It had taken the magnificent, unflappable and incredibly talented George Herbert four hours to programme, so even with the blower working again, there was no guarantee that we’d be able to go ahead with the performance we had planned. It had not. So we did a little dance of relief, then rehearsed the radiant Philippa Boyle’s bits before doing the only possible thing at such a time, which was to consume lots of pizza. I’ll not lie, I had one large glass of red as well.
Most of the choir made it back for the emergency top-and-tail rehearsal of this extremely demanding programme, but thanks to Bert, we still had to go ahead without a proper chance to balance anything, for the choir to adjust to the wonderful yet unfamiliar sound world after weeks of rehearsing with piano, or for George to properly rehearse the Poulenc, which he was playing for the first time. But we did it. I’m really proud of the bunch of humans who make up the North London Chorus and who always deliver the goods in the end, singing with such passion and expression. Both soloists were fabulous, as expected, and as well as his virtuosic playing of Duruflé and Poulenc, George had the audience captivated by his performance of Nadia Boulanger’s Trois pièces pour orgue.
Organist George Herbert (Photo credit: Website)
