This article written by Jan Anderson, who attended the weekend of music making at Glenthorne, in the Lake District.
Picture an idyllic valley, wooded slopes skirting steep grassy mountain sides, glittering with frozen waterfalls, mirror-like lake half-frozen, reflecting changing sky. A huddle of grey and white dwellings gathered around a simple church...and not far off a tiny cottage that once housed the great poet Wordsworth. Listen........
'What voice of gladness, Hark! In heaven is ringing' - No, not a lark as Parry suggests, just The Leaveners 'at it again' in Glenthorne, Grasmere, Cumbria.
Q - What do you get if you take over 30 singers and instrumentalists and bring them together in arguably one of the most beautiful spots in the Lake District?
A - A great weekend of fun, friends, food fit for a feast, music, mayhem, merriment and much, much, mirth.......
This is my second outing with The Leaveners - so I know roughly what to expect...although our trusty leader Roger is always full of surprises. Old friends and new quickly get down to business - the choir taken off to the lounge while the 'chamber' musicians are sent off...to the chambers (the cavernous conference room and more unusually to two of the bedrooms - Eine Kliene Nachtmusic anyone?)
Roger tested our mettle with a variety of songs including one written by the Earl of Mornington...so true to the famous Radio 4 panel game we all pretended to know exactly what we were singing, made up the rules as we went along, disagreed about when to end and miraculously ended up with something that sounded quite goood. Meanwhile shadowy figures kept walking by the window in a most mysterious way...it's those crafty instrumentalists trying to beat us into the dining room again!
Sunday morning saw some last minute rehearsing for our 'group session' then we all scrambled into the conference room for a bit of Bach and a magnificent 'Magnificat'. There was some cries of consternation from the basses when they found themselves stuck behind...a double bass... which gave a total eclipse of the Moon (Roger)...but the double bass cheerfully orbited out of alignment and everyone was happy again. Then there was a display of the aurora borealis - oh sorry, that was just our offical photographer firing up his flash bulbs again.
Just time for a last feast and thanks to our wonderful hosts, our apparently super-powered organisers and our charismatic conductor. Then it was time to go home...leaving glorious Glenthorne to peace and quiet...and the occasional song of a lark.
