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Ghost singers

When I was 13, I sang in a performance of Mahler's third symphony with the Hallé Orchestra under Sir John Barbirolli. Our school's 'special choir' was a regular feature in Manchester performances of orchestral  pieces with children's parts - amongst other outings, I sang in Stravinsky's Persephone, Verdi's Otello, Malcolm Williamson's Our Man in Havana and Mussorgsky's Khovanschina.

We performed Mahler 3 a total of three times - concerts in at the Free Trade Hall and the Festival Hall, and a BBC recording for broadcast. But what I didn't realise until a few weeks ago was that the BBC had issued that recording as an album. I managed to get hold of a CD copy and had the eerie experience of hearing myself and fellow choir members from 55 years ago.

The (extremely long) symphony was quite a trial of patience for us. We had movement after movement marked 'tacet' on our copies, before featuring in the 4 minutes or so of the movement marked 'Lustig Im Tempo Und Keck Im Ausdruck'. Our part almost entirely consisted of singing 'Bimm bamm' (supposedly the sound of bells) with just a brief burst of German words. One of the choir was not allowed to return after spending much of the first movements on stage in full view of the audience reading a newspaper.

Even so, it was a remarkable experience for a young person, and hearing those youthful voices Bimm Bamming away, brought the memories flooding back.

I've extracted a couple of parts of the movement here, which I hope can be played as fair usage to show us in action:

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