Schöner Götterfunken, Götterfunken!

[Urbane Guerrilla]

The wife and I sang in the chorus last night in the second of three performances of Bruckner's Te Deum and Beethoven's Ninth. This isn't the first time on the Ninth for either of us, but it's still thrilling. I sing bass, she sings tenor.

With the New West Orchestra, Boris Brott conducting, and a hundred and twenty-four voices counting the soloists, we sang a heaven-storming performance. Boris and our chorale director were both effusive in praising our performance, the director saying we'd never done it better.

I'm still rather floating around in the heavens on those sanfter Flügel even after a good night's sleep. With the Bruckner as a warmup -- it's a suitable opening act for the Ninth, as it is itself a large, magnificent piece but not so grandiose as to fight with the Ninth for a top billing -- I ended up a bit hoarse by the time the louder measures of the middle of the Allegro energico, sempre ben marcato came around. Arrrgh, I was thinking -- didn't quite budget my effort right, but I managed to work around it, pulling back just a bit. I can sing double-forte a fair bit, but my voicebox's endurance is not preternatural. There's a lot of double and triple forte in the last half of the piece. The dynamics range from p to fff, and that's just for the chorus -- well, the soloists range the same way too.

Well, by the Presto at the end, it was like great sex. Guess that Kuss really is for all the world. I didn't quite weep afterwards, but my heart was very full. Someone at the reception afterwards asked me how I was. I said, "Exalted."