Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves: Peterborough Male Voice Choir

[MrShaneBoyer]

Just one word Wow!

[mvcfan1]

By placing videos on Youtube one encourages comment and debate. However, rather than suppress, surely it would better to simply take the quality negative criticism, use it to advance and ignore the rest........after all it has no real value. Asking those who make unwarranted comments to stop generally spurs them on and they may come back under another name anyway. The other option is to disable comments altogether and deny everyone. Suffice it to say, I enjoyed listening to this performance.

[PeterboroughMVChoir]

Dear Dravid, Fred and Carlos,

Thanks for your comments, both positive and negative, on this video.

PMVC, like all other male voice choirs, work really hard to improve their performances, and whilst negative criticism can sometimes cause discomfort, we believe it is an important factor in ongoing development.

However, I feel that this thread has gone as far as politeness allows and would be grateful if you could agree to disagree and call it a day.

Many thanks,

Will Prideaux

Director, PMVC

[dravidwake]

I apologize. The last comemts were aimed at mickat32 for his response and then for the comments about the intenttions at rightsaidfred. Both, I suspect, members of the choir.

[dravidwake]

@CarlosMoreno245 You mean you won't pay for my criticism. Oh. You can have it for free - but you are obviously too thin skinned to take any notice...and when did you speak to Northcote and Verdi to ascertain their intentions? LOL.

[mickat32]

@dravidwake

This is a highly creditable interpretation of Northcote's version of Verdi's Hebrew Slaves. I don't understand your criticism of the performance in terms of clarity of phrasing - "Joy sounds like woe?" not to my ears! I would have liked a better sound recording too, but that's asking a lot in a cathedral acoustic. It's a shame there is no CD of the choir that has been recorded in a studio, but this live version is good!

[rightsaidfredful]

There is a" MVC style" for this piece that even some of the best?? follow. It is typically too loud at the start, smoothes out the rythmic sections and does something absolutely attrocious around the word "temples" . This choir is clearly trying to get closer to both Verdi and Northcotes intentions. Well Done!

[dravidwake]

There are lots of words before we get to the Golden Harps - and they all mean something - and need to be phrased and given some meaning rather than sung mechanically - "joy" sounded just like "woe". But then if all you are looking for is praise rather then constructive criticism....you should not have published this in a public forum...For all you know I am an adjudicator for musical competitions. I am not but I might be...

[dravidwake]

@CarlosMoreno245 Oh yes I knew that. But pp might mean very quietly, but it does not mean in a boring way. In fact it takes more effort and intensity to begin a song "pp" than "f" the voice preparation has to be just right

[dravidwake]

The quality of the recording is not very good - I hope. It starts in a very lacklustre way - but the choir wakes up with Golden Harps. "Ihspire us"! On the whole it doesn't

[speightuk]

Splendid! The singers are really well rehearsed and obviously enjoying themselves enormously...and the conductor is wonderful! We've been invited to your Summer concert by one of your recent recruits, Brian Gibson. We'll look forward to that!

All the best Heather Speight from Durham (and the Durham Singers)