Fantastic evening in Riga.
The evening, hosted (as was the whole week) by Latvian superstar Inessa Galante, was expertly conducted by Aleksandrs Vilumanis (or Mr Ragtime Band as I liked to call him - geddit?!)
First third of the concert, William Tell from the Orch. {The Lone Ranger if you must}... & then the delight of
Gábor Boldoczki playing the Haydn Trumpet concerto exquisitely...
The second third started with the orchestra's rendition of
Janice Dixon sang Spirituals (accompanied by Inna Davidova - who helps run this whole thing - on the piano) and Gershwin with the orchestra - glorious.
We started with Perpetuum Mobile (on our own), then sang Handel's Lascia ch'io Pianga & Yesterday with Inessa herself. All went down terribly well with the packed audience.
Then we gave them Italian Opera in 4 minutes... Genée's Italian Salad... This part was finished off by us with the orchestra, mapping William Arms Fisher's words to the Largo from Dvořák's 9th Symphony onto the symphony movement itself. We'd done this before with the Québec Symphony Orchestra (OSQ) & it was splendid to do it again.
We sang Bring Him Home & Hush Macushla with the orchestra [Latvian National Symphony btw], as well as Henry VIII's Pastime with Good Companye & Duke Ellington's Caravan...
A Latvian Jazz singer sang Ain't no Sunshine... and then...
The whole cast performed together Barcelona (a rather splendid Olympic song in this Olympic year!) & Summertime, and we were there!
Just four hours after starting!
Phew! A lovely evening in Latvia - one we hope we shall experience again...
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