HART Male Voice Choir has returned from a successful September concert tour in Portugal with applause from delighted audiences still ringing in their ears.
The tour, planned in response to invitations from local music groups in eastern Portugal, was organised by a Portuguese-speaking choir member with strong links in thae region.
Four evening concerts were packed into a seven-day tour in four venues.
From their hotel base in the town of Caldas da Rainha, the choir travelled north for a first concert held in the magnificent Monastery of Batalha, a gigantic pearl of Gothic architecture that dates back to 1385AD and is now honoured with Unesco World Heritage status.
The second concert was held in the Caldas da Rainha Museum of Jose Malhoa, with wonderful acoustics that allowed the choir to produce a superb sound that was enthusiastically received by an audience of more than 300.
The Monastery of Santa Maria de Alcobaça, dating back to 1135 AD, was the awe-inspiring venue for the third concert where the choir sang under the ancient vaulted stone ceiling of the chapter house.
A special guest was Portuguese professional Soprano, Vera Silva. During the concert, resident bats and house martins skimmed above the heads of the audience and at each quarter hour the monastery belled chimed gently in a nearby chapel.
Finally at Cascais, a delightful seaside town just north of Lisbon, the choir sang with the Estoril Choir as guests, at the Cultural Centre on the quayside.
The exuberant Portugese audiences were all hugely appreciative of the lively Hart MVC programme, especially the encore rendition in Portugese of a national folksong O Rama da Oliveira (Olive Tree Song) which they joined in with gusto.
The standing ovations at every concert and the many requests for return visits made all the hard work and extra rehearsals well worthwhile.
Between concerts choristers enjoyed leisurely sight-seeing trips with wives and friends to Lisbon, Obidos, Sintra and Fatima and there was some lively socialising throughout the week to add to the overall success of this Portugese concert tour.
David Bowden-Smith
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