Page 22 - We'll Sing Coverage Book

concert that was already pre-recorded and we are beginning online rehearsals again this
month.”

The constantly-changing situation regarding restrictions around the disease has created huge
headaches for orchestra managements, with carefully re-structured plans for digital seasons
scuppered at short notice when conductors and soloists were no longer permitted to travel,
but Batsleer says the needs of the choruses of both orchestras have still been on their minds.

“This time is allowing me to work with the management of both organisations to ensure that
when we do come back we come back just as strongly as we were. We need to look on it as
an opportunity to do some renovations and decorate the house, as it were, so the singers still
feel part of the family, even if they are not performing.”

The RSNO Chorus was to have provided the climax of the opening concert of the current
season with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and was due to make its second appearance on
December 12, singing for Music Director Thomas Sondergard in a rare performance of Karol
Szymanowski’s Symphony No 3, The Song of the Night. In the revised digital season there is
plenty of Beethoven, but Sondergard, Szymanowski and the Chorus are all absent next
month.

The SCO Chorus was scheduled to sing Handel’s Coronation Anthems in October and
Mozart’s Solemn Vespers this month, before its own Christmas concert in Greyfriars Kirk,
including a new work by Anna Clyne. For the members of both choirs, that schedule of
learning and performance is a major commitment now missing from their lives.

This evening, however, Batsleer’s Huddersfield chorus will premiere its own new
commission, online.

“In Huddersfield there was a window at the beginning of the season in September when we
were able to come together in small groups to do socially-distanced rehearsals. The
Huddersfield Choral Society had two of its members die of Covid earlier in the year so, as an
organisation, it is acutely aware of the dangers, but we were able to do socially-distance
rehearsal with up to 20 people in one very large, well-ventilated large space.

“The rehearsals were much shorter and there was no contact at all between members, except
that made through making music. It was a very touching thing to experience,” he says.

“Now the rate of infection is much higher and we have reverted to doing things online, but in
that moment it was possible to do a recording, which we will be putting out online. It is a
project with the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage. He’s written two poems inspired by the
experiences of members of the choral society during lockdown and we commissioned two
composers, Daniel Kidane and Cheryl Frances-Hoad, to write pieces. They were written
especially to understand the limitations of rehearsing in the middle of a pandemic.”

Batsleer wants to be clear thatany comparison is only useful in showing possible ways
forward – he does not want to appear in any way critical of the approach to dealing with
Covid in Scotland.