Singers from Sing Schubert! Junior Master Class with ColetteThe Belfast Music Society (BMS) is celebrating the music of Franz Schubert in its International Festival of Chamber Music in January 2009 and have partnered with Tosini to provide two Master Classes and a Coffee Recital for young local singers. 

The first of these master classes took place on Saturday, 29^th November  2008 and featured 7 young singers aged 15 – 18 yrs who had prepared a Schubert song with their teacher.  The singers were to sing their songs in German and from memory and then work with the very respected and renowned Irish mezzo-soprano and teacher, Colette McGahon accompanied by Daniel O’Neill, who has worked with Tosini at many workshops and master classes and Elizabeth Bicker who is so well known for her great work with young musicians and singers in particular. Despite freezing temperatures outside, the excitement and buzz inside the classroom at St. Patrick’s School meant that we didn’t even notice the weather. The afternoon got underway with Tosini Secretary, Marie O’Sullivan, who welcomed everyone and then launched into some fun physical and vocal warm-ups to get all our young singers ready to sing.   Colette then invited Julia Clarke, soprano, to open the master class and she gave us a lovely sparkling performance of Seligkeit.  As the song has three verses, Colette approached the song by asking Julia to recite the song like a poem and then line by line, guided Julia in the pronunciation of certain German vowel sounds that would not be so familiar to young singers used to singing in English. This gave Julia lots to think about and helped her to get variety in the verses. The next singer, Mairead O’Neill,  soprano, who travelled up from Dungannon and sang for us the Associated Board Grade 4 song, Minnelied.  We all agreed that whilst the melody was very beautiful, the text definitely held a lot of challenges for a young singer with many difficult vowel sounds and long German words.  Mairead coped beautifully with the challenges and enjoyed practising speaking the text quite separately from the melodic line. Colette encouraged all the singers in the room to get used to the feeling of a different language on their tongue, teeth and lips by speaking the text out loud. Our next singer, Sarah Nelson, mezzo-soprano, sang Wanderers Nachtlied, which tells of the peace and quiet of walking through a wood at night listening to the silence.  Sarah originally felt more comfortable singing the song in a lower key, but with lots of encouragement from Colette, she sang the song for us in the original key, which was a 3^rd higher.  Sarah was apprehensive at first, but everyone agreed that the emotions of the song shone through much better in the original key and she had succeeded in really communicating the meaning of the song and in creating quite a nice atmosphere in the room. The last singer before a welcome cup of tea was Peter Lyness, baritone, who gave us a strong performance of Aufenthalt. This was a big song with lots of energy and scope for an intelligent and imaginative singer. The title of the song means ‘Resting Place’, however the rich piano accompaniment suggests surging rivers and roaring forests, full of pounding chords and anguished themes which  makes the listeners feel the singers disquiet.  Peter gave us a very committed performance with good German pronunciation and a sensitivity to the theme of the song. The first singer on after the break was Sarah Armstrong, soprano, who sang for us a very gentle but a little too slow Wiegenlied.  Colette spoke to Sarah about the importance of agreeing a suitable tempo by actually singing a bar of the song to the accompanist rather than humming or counting time.  Once the correct tempo was agreed, Colette helped Sarah explore the three verses ensuring that there was variety in the performance and showed her how to bring out the meaning, again through speaking the text separately.  With regards to pronunciation of certain German vowel sounds, the open and closed vowels were practised by all the singers and teachers there and it became apparent that singers are often not aware of the subtle differences in these sounds. The next singer happens to share the same name as the famous American Mezzo-Soprano, Susan Graham, also mezzo-soprano and she sang for us the Schubert song written in celebration of All Saint’s Day Litanei. Of a deeply devotional nature, this song shows an exquisite example of Schubert’s writing a haunting melody over a gently flowing accompaniment.  Each verse ends in ‘all souls, rest in peace’ and Susan used her fine lyric voice and excellent breath control to convey the sense of prayerfulness and peace.  Again, Colette guided Susan through intelligent use of the text, working again on pronunciation and giving clarity to the meaning thereby giving each verse more meaning for singer and audience. The last singer of the day was tenor, Chris McGuigan, who gave us a very musical performance of Ständchen, (Serenade). Chris’s romantic lyric tenor voice suited this song very well, and with a good feel for the text, he managed to successfully communicate the meaning of the song to the audience. Colette helped Chris negotiate the higher passages in the song with some tips on how to keep his jaw and chin relaxed and this certainly helped Chris to open up his ringing tenor voice and enabled him to give us some very fine singing indeed. At the end of the afternoon, Colette took the opportunity to pay tribute to all the singing teachers who had put forward students for the project and thanked them for their hard work in preparing them for the ‘Sing Schubert!  event.  She then thanked the singers for their whole hearted participation being aware that for some, this was their first ever master class and also the first time to sing in a foreign language.  Tosini Chair, Mairead Duffy then brought the afternoon to a close by sincerely thanking Colette for all her inspirational teaching which was a great help not only to the singers but to their teachers, many of whom were in attendance.  As ever, where would singers be without our accompanists and Mairead paid tribute to Elizabeth Bicker and Daniel O’Neill who accompanied our singers so beautifully throughout the afternoon.   Mairead then thanked BMS Chair, Sheila Sloan and BMS Concert’s Manager, Pam Alcorn, our partners in this project, who seemed to thoroughly enjoy the afternoon.  Mairead also thanked the BMS for helping Tosini provide our ‘emerging young singers’ with a much needed platform for them to learn their craft and hone their skills as performers.  We can all now eagerly look forward to the Senior Master Class which is scheduled to take place on Saturday, 10^th January 2009, again with Colette McGahon.  We will have 6 singers aged between 18 – 24 years and they will be asked to prepare two songs for the event. Selected singers from both Master Classes will then be invited by Colette McGahon to perform at a Coffee Recital to be held in the Harty Room of the Queen’s University of Belfast on 31st January 2009 as part of the BMS International Festival of Chamber Music.  Marie O’SullivanTosini Secretary30^th November 2008