KVT – Sing, Song, Sung

Sing, Song, Sung

It was one of those evenings when we almost decided to go home and enjoy a quiet night with that bottle of mellow red wine that I’d been saving up. But we had a feeling that our yabbersome neighbors might be having one of their interminable talk fests so it made the decision to go and see the Rundfunk Jugendchor Wernigerode (The Radio Youth Choir from Wernigerode), the very beautiful hilly town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany) a pleasant alternative. And very pleasant it proved to be! And free entry too! Thirty five members of this touring choir gave a performance at the Youth Theatre. Formed in 1951 and now under the capable leadership of Mr Peter Habermann, the singers are students at the music school in Wernigerode. The mixed sex choir, aged from 15 to 18 is one of Germany’s most successful choirs and has a host of international awards and a raft of CD’s and critically acclaimed performances behind them.

The young women in their distinctive orange dresses and the young men in tux and bow ties gave us a set of perfectly modulated German folk songs and a beautiful madrigal and followed with a set of international folk songs and some lively gospel spirituals. Several of these allowed individual choristers show off their solo voices.

‘Guten Abend Gute Nacht’ was really gorgeous and the final Handel a joy. When they encored with a delicate Vietnamese folk song, the light tenor voices of the two soloists were pure delight and I had to wipe away a tear or two.

One of those musical evenings that warm your heart and we returned home to the yabbering in a mellow mood that mellowed even further after a glass of the mellow red that we raised in salute to the young men and women from Wernigerode and the German Embassy and the Goethe Institute for their generosity.