Thursday, November 29, 2007

King's Chapel and Orchestras


I went to listen to a performance of Elgar's The Apostles at King's Chapel last night. Overall, I enjoyed it, although I have to say that King's Chapel really isn't the best place for such a performance. Performing in the chapel is like performing inside a cave. The acoustics are quite bad on two accounts:

  1. We could hardly hear the words spoken. There was so much echoing that I could hear the voice reverberating through the whole chapel. I just couldn't make out the words. So, it's probably useful for conducting services, but not very suitable for singing a proper work.
  2. We couldn't hear most of the higher pitched instruments simply because the lower frequencies are amplified too much. So, when the percussions or brass section plays, they drown everyone out. This is rather sad, considering that the bulk of the orchestra was strings.
But I still found it an enjoyable performance. They had a bunch of professional British singers singing the solo parts. These singers had a few centuries worth of singing experiences, collectively. Luckily, we were all given a programme. So, I could follow the flow of the performance and get my camera out during intermission and at the end.

I got a bunch of good pics, but I do believe that this is the best one of them all. Composition, colour and all that. It was shot sitting down on my seat, one-handed, over the head, under extremely low-lighting (the lights on the stage were the only lights in the chapel). Good thing it turned out as well as it did. It was taken right at the end of the performance.

PS: For £5, it was worth the money.

PPS: I particularly like a quote from the programme booklet:
"I know that the conception and creation of a beautiful thing is not without sorrow and pain, and I don't know if you have the joy of it at all."
How true... how unfortunately true...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Marina What the fuck..the effect of mahathir incompetence is just appearing. The richest men are chinese, the richest man is indian..what the fuck why would you want to deface either abdullah or bush face..?

Is it just to be fashionables to be anti government.

The fact that they are not defaces shows that the malaysian generally are apathetic towards issues which you think are important.. especially mahathir who like to grandstand with the western wwhwhiworld.. for what purpose?

While the malays are left behind economically in their own country..

we didnt put him there to belittle the malays.. to grand stand.. to hob nob with pavarotti.. we want him to work for the malays.. at least he had the sense to leave when people are tired after 22 years..

December 4, 2007 10:41 AM

Shawn Tan said...

dude: if you want to tell Marina something, stick it in her blog, not mine.. i've already answered your question in the comments on my blog on the AEMB..