Busy week starts

Yesterday was P's birthday and, as he had the day off work, he, B and I went to Three Bags Full for lunch. B and I both had the very tasty house-cured salmon on corn and pea fritter and P had the hot cakes with poached fruit and ricotta. Afterwards we strolled down to Victoria Street where we checked out the new Aldi which just opened last week. We decided we can probably go there for much of our grocery shopping.

Back to Gloriana last night - the next concert is going to be great. We started with some glorious Brahms after which we moved on to Striggio's 40-part motet Ecce beatam lucem. This is an interesting piece but not nearly as much fun as Tallis' Spem in alium, also in 40 parts, which we rehearsed after the break. We will be performing Spem spread out around the audience in eight five-part choirs; who said surround sound was a new invention?

We finished last night's rehearsal with a run-through of Clytus Gottwald's transcription of Die zwei blauen Augen by Mahler (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen). It actually works quite well, so I'm looking forward to Gottwald's arrangement of the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, which is also on the program.

Tonight it's a Gombert rehearsal, and again on Friday for the concert on Saturday. I'm also catching up with people on Wednesday and going to the doctor's on Thursday.