This year’s choir is frightening.

At last night’s rehearsal, we covered six pieces in two hours. Four were new, and a further two were works we had looked at in last week’s rehearsal. And three of the pieces were in foreign languages: one French, one Italian, one German.

What’s frightening is the speed with which the group picks up repertoire, how rapidly they grasp the overall stylistic feel of a piece. To begin, we immersed ourselves in the gentle, somnolent harmonies of Brahms’ In Stiller Nacht, complete with all the linguistic trickery of singing in German, and the spirit of the piece materialised quickly. This was swiftly followed by a musically geographical shift to Elizabethan England, to Dowland’s Sleep, Wayward Thoughts, with its metric variety, moving between 3/4 and 3/2, and the group adapted to the deft changes with ease.

This year’s student conductor, Steph, then took the group through Sullivan’s The Long Day Closes, looking at the meaning behind the text and getting the choir to bring this out in the music.

Lassus’ Bonjour, et puis quelles nouvelles ? presented the most challenging material at this week’s session, with syncopation, free-flowing imitation and rapid changes from homophony to polyphonic and antiphonal textures. This was the most difficult piece, and there’s still lots of work to do; but a good first reading.

We literally danced through Tutto lo di when we revisited it this week; already the piece has great verve and rhythmic spring, even if the Italian isn’t quite as accurate as it might be! And to close, further exploration of the rich colours of Whitacre’s Sleep, building passages chord by chord and starting to develop a rich, sonorous sound.

The work-rate over these first two rehearsals has been intense – eight pieces in two weeks, lots of sight-reading, embracing foreign languages, notwithstanding the fact that the group is itself brand new and the members are mostly new to one another. And it’s alarming, how quickly the group is picking the pieces up and adjusting stylistically to each new work as it comes along. Yes, there’s still some note-bashing to do, some corners to tidy up and lines to clarify; there’s balancing to develop, dynamics to address and articulation to improve, not to mention vowel-sounds in the Italian and consonants in the German to correct. But what’s immensely reassuring is the fact that the group is reading through these pieces so quickly, and are prepared to have a bold attempt when confronted by new material.

It’s scary – and exciting. In equal measure. Hold onto your hats, this could be an electrifying year…