Today was a full day for the Cardinal Singers because it marked our lengthiest performance of the trip! After breakfast, a morning rehearsal, and lunch, we traveled to Darmstadt to sing at St. Ludwig Darmstadt. The commute from our lodging to the church is about 2 hours by bus, and when we arrived we got to do our first sound check in the space.
When I first entered the church, all I could say was “Wow.” The church is circular, with a massive dome over the space painted blue to represent the heavens and the walls behind pillars on the ground level painted a reddish-orange to represent Heaven and Earth becoming one. The acoustic is equally impressive, as from a central point in front of the altar, you can hear your voice echo back to you from different directions for at least five seconds. This type of space makes intonation easy because you hear across the whole choir so effortlessly, but it makes watching the conductor all the more imperative because you can easily be fooled by the echoes. One of our pieces uses stomping, and we had to practice timing our stomps to ensure no one got thrown off by the echo of them.
St. Ludwig Darmstadt’s director of music is a wonderful organist, so in addition to our singing, he performed one organ improv to kick off the concert and another at the halfway point. We did almost all of our possible repertoire for the concert (including two encores!), and a favorite moment of mine was when we sang Mendelssohn’s Denn er hat seinen Engeln. As I’ve mentioned before, I always wonder how German audiences will react when we sing in their native tongue. To my absolute delight, a German lady sitting in the front row who had to be at least 80 started grinning from ear to ear and began mouthing the words! By the end of the piece, she was wiping tears from her eyes, and I nearly was too after watching her be so profoundly moved by our humble efforts to do the motet justice. Since St. Ludwig Darmstadt is a Catholic Church, I noticed at least two nuns in the crowd. We sang multiple liturgical pieces in Latin and German, and I would have given anything to talk to them about those pieces and our shared Christian faith. Alas, I’ve developed a mild cold over the last 24 hours, so I stayed away from audience members after the concert to make sure I didn’t get them sick.
After the concert, we had a pizza party in a fellowship hall for the church, and then it was time to head back to our lodging. I’m writing this the morning after because I chose extra rest last night for my health, and I’m happy to report I’m feeling much better today. The choir is about to embark on a boat tour of the Rhine and then take cable cars to see a fortress overlooking Koblenz, so it should be a wonderful day that I’ll look forward to updating you on!