Another successful choral concert

Our choir held its annual Christmas concert last night, performing the Christmas Oratorio of Camille Saint-Saëns, Three Nativity Carols by Steven Paulus, a contemporary composer who passed away a few weeks ago and some other miscellaneous Christmas and Haunkkah pieces. We worked extremely hard in particular on the Paulus pieces because they were so challenging and difficult and our hard work paid off handsomely with an excellent performance. The Saint-Saëns also went off well, but the instrumentalists could have used more rehearsal time and I was dismayed by errors by the keyboard player and listless and tonally challenged performances by the strings. I have to wonder if the instrumental ensemble at all rehearsed together before the performance as the choir did week to week. The choir certainly rose to the occasion as we do each time we take the stage, even though we had our first rehearsal with the orchestra just hours before the performance. I truly wish that we would not rehearse on the same day as the performance because I think that it detracts from the quality of it. Everyone is tired by performance time and it shows in our performances, although I thought that we did an outstanding job last night in spite of it all. However, for those of us who are older choristers, it can be quite physically taxing to stand and sing for that long. One soprano seems to have an increasingly difficult time getting through these concerts and has twice passed out during them from sheer exhaustion, including last night. I think that it shows a real disregard for the musicians by taxing us that much on performance day. I'd rather spend the day resting up and then going in fresh and singing well, but that's me and I am not the conductor, so we have to abide by his wishes. When I first joined choir last spring and we rehearsed on concert day, I thought it was merely a one time deal due to a scheduling glitch with the orchestra and our conductor seemed genuinely apologetic for making us do that, but now it seems to be a regular practice of making us come in two hours before performance time and doing a grueling run through to iron out any last minute issues. I would much prefer the final rehearsals to be Friday and Saturday instead of Saturday and the Sunday of the concert. I would also like the entire last week before the concert to be done with the orchestra so that we can adjust to the sound of having them there. I guess I got spoiled when I performed with the Akron Symphony Orchestra Chorus because this is how we did it on concert week. Only once did we rehearse on performance day and it showed in a bad performance that night because we were exhausted and our attention lapsed as a result. Well, I guess this is just how it is going to be with this choir, but I sure wish it was different. Now that we are done for the fall season, we have four weeks to rest up and get ready for the spring season that begins in January. We will be performing Leonard Bernstein's "Chichester Psalms" and Johannes Brahms "Schicksalslied". We have our work cut out for us: the Bernstein is in Hebrew and the Brahms is sung in German. So not only do we have notes to learn, but two foreign languages as well. Fortunately, I have already sung the Bernstein once, so it will just be review for me. And I adore Brahms and have sung German before, but that never makes it any easier! Lots of work ahead......hard work, but I am looking forward to the challenge.