THE BEDFORD GIRLS
Were you an original Bedford Girl, or do you know someone who was?
Our attempts to collate the names of that first team of 14 who sang together to win their first prize in May 1945 have come up with the following:
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Nora Capewell
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Joyce Green
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June Hoult
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Deidre Keeling
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Gladys Peake
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Marjorie Shingler
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Beryl Wall
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Brenda Whitmore
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Sylvia Williams
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Jeanne Winfield
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If you can tell us who’s missing or have any other stories about the choir, please drop us a line.
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BIRTH OF THE BEDFORDS – “You Can Be In it”
In those days, life in Shelton revolved round work and chapel. During the war, with dads away, keeping the kids happy had been a challenge. There was school of course but Chapel was a godsend. It provided both spiritual and social sustenance.
Post-war, Ridgway Memorial Church, on the corner of Havelock Place and Bedford Road, was the centre of a strong community. As well as two services and Sunday School every week, Bedford Chapel, as it was known, provided a packed programme of social events. Fetes and fairs, Boys Brigade, Bring & Buys, Sisterhood and, of course, chapel choir practices dotted the diary.
Ridgway had a healthy choir and a good musical reputation. May Walley was the organist and her husband Harry, when he returned from the war, was choirmaster and Sunday School superintendent. Sunday School Anniversary services were joyous and packed occasions. Concerts and recitals were regular features too. With the idea of keeping the youngsters engaged – and their parents – a number of theatrical productions were staged. These included operettas, like Highwayman Love and Dogs of Devon (Or Foiled Again!), using the stage in of the former chapel building across Bedford Road, which was now the Sunday School.
It was into this mix that May Carr, a Ridgway trustee and church secretary, stepped with a suggestion. She’d heard that the Methodist Circuit was organising a choral competition as part of a Stoke and Macclesfield District Methodist Youth Fair. Why didn’t May (Walley) get a choir together? Musical May decided to “have a go” and in her usual style, corralled 14 young singers.
Original member Brenda Fowles (nee Whitmore) recalls: “The competition was for youth choirs, aged 12 to 21. May came to me and said, ‘You look 12. You can be in it’. That was it!”
After a few weeks rehearsal, in May 1945 the choir sang in the competition on the stage of the Victoria Hall in Hanley. They won! Indeed the adjudicators were so impressed that, after the results had been announced, they asked the girls to sing again for their pleasure.
The competition appearance was originally intended as a “one-off” with the choir disbanding afterwards but the members enjoyed the experience so much, they wouldn’t hear of it. And the Bedford Singers were born.
Bob Dulson
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A TIPPET INTRODUCTION
In 1965 there was to be a performance of A Child of our Time in the Victoria Hall with singers drawn from the City’s very good mixed choirs, accompanied by the Manchester Mozart Players and conducted by May. I’d been in the Ceramic City Choir for about 8 years and thought it would be good to sing with such a conductor. In the event it felt as though Brenda and I were the only singers not in the Bedfords who turned up. It seemed that the other choirs were rather sniffy about May having been chosen to conduct! Hey-ho.
I found myself placed next to a bass who appeared somewhat worse at sight-reading than I was. He turned out to be May’s husband, Harry, who was in fact an impeccable sol-fa reader, but that didn’t help him a lot with Tippett’s staff score. When it came to our rehearsal with the orchestra in the Victoria Hall, I was on the timpanist’s left. He turned to me and said, “Can you tell me when we get to bar 57? I’ve no idea what she’s beating.”
May rarely, if ever, used a baton. She did beat time but not in any conventional way. Time to her was a living, breathing creature not to be caged behind bars or chained to clocks, and she marked its passage by subtle shifts in facial expression and occasional ripples of a muscle in hand or shoulder.
Evidently Harry suggested to May that I’d be an asset to her choir, so she invited me to join, which, flattered, I did. One reason was that the Ceramic City Choir was bound by the terms of a legacy to perform Messiah every year. Much as I love that great work, this seemed to me too much of a good thing, and I thought in the Bedfords I’d be free of it. What a hope! We sang it several times every year, year after year.
Geoff Rainbow
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A VARIED MENU
May and the Bedfords, were a large part of our lives, and taught me much about singing, musical appreciation, commitment, self-discipline...and cooking!
The Bedfords were hosting the Swingle Singers at the Victoria Hall, Hanley, and we were providing some sort of supper afterwards. May was organising the food preparation, and asked me if I would make a Black Forest Gateaux! I’d never made one before but I couldn’t say no. So I baked one, and, thanks to May, have made several more since.
On another occasion Julian Lloyd Webber was performing at one of The Penkhull Festivals. May was looking for folk to prepare food for the artists. The remit was for a "light Supper". I can't remember what I prepared or what the artist thought of his meal but the assignment was another challenge to my culinary repertoire - Julian was a vegetarian!
Christine Burden
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FROM BUSKER TO OPERA SINGER
I don't remember why I called May or indeed how I found her number (possibly I was busking in Newcastle when she saw me singing some Beatles song very poorly) I just remember a rather firm voice telling me to be at her house for our first lesson together on Tuesday morning at 8am.
8am??###!?!??! For singing??
I turned up and walked through the gate into her walled garden. The door to Victoria House was open (it was February, so lots of "fresh air for your healthy lungs Steven"). I introduced myself and set out on something that has transformed my life.
We started with a song that was far too hard (to test me?) and then I was introduced to lots of languages. Classical music and languages I knew nothing about. But I was getting fed up with rock and pop music and felt that I needed something else. Something I was missing.
One year later (yes, I wasn't put off) I joined the Bedford Singers.
Two weeks to learn a choral piece by Bach then perform it at the Penkhull Festival. Two months later a performance of the Messiah. And solos! How difficult could it be for me to learn a bit of Handel? Who was he anyway?
I knew nothing about how good or bad I was, or could be, so I just did it. Looking back complete ignorance got me through.
Many Penkhull Festivals and other concerts led to further study and then outside professional work.
I liked May’s directness. It could rub some people up the wrong way, I’m sure, but at least you knew where you stood. And I did.
Tell me if my singing’s good or bad (I would prefer to think good as we all would) but just tell me and then we can deal with it.
And she did. And I know that she also respected me for doing the same.
And we got on.
This has now made me a successful full time performer and singing teacher. Something I really enjoy. I can’t imagine doing anything else.
From busker to opera singer.
Thank you May.
Steven C. Harper. ARCM (PG) GMus.
Performer and Teacher of Music
Following his time with May and the Bedfords, Steve went on to enjoy a successful career as a teacher and freelance singer with choirs, opera companies and recitals around the country. He has performed a number of major roles in operas including Mozart’s ‘Cosi fan tutte’, Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ and Puccini’s ‘La Bohème’, in such notable venues as London’s Sadlers Wells and Swansea’s Grand Theatre.
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YOU CAN'T CAP PUCCINI
I think of May often; only a few days before writing this I was taking part in a concert in Stockport where I sang Puccini’s wonderful aria “Che Gelida Manina” from “La Boheme”. I had learned this particular piece with her (indeed, it was my introduction to opera) in 1998. As I finished singing the aria her voice came into my head and my mind was cast back 17 years. She told me: “I can promise you that you will sing that for the rest of your life.” And, of course, she was right.
Philip Cartwright
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MAINTAINING STANDARDS
Singing in the choir was a great joy and I learned so much about phrasing and producing a good tone...singing a lot of "nee-nahs" along the way.
We were exposed to an enormous variety of music but among my favourites were The Messiah, Haydn's Imperial Mass and the Havergal Brian part songs
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We sang the Nelson Mass more times than I can remember. The sound we made was glorious, and Kate Snape's rendering of the Kyrie, sent chills down my back! Whenever I hear this Mass today the memories of May and the choir come flooding back. But no-one who sings the Kyrie ever seems to come up to Kate's matchless standard!
We were to travel to London to record the Havergal Brian songs, and we seemed to know them inside out. It was a great day, travelling down in the bus together, full of expectation, to sing this beautiful music. If it was not sung to May's standard, we sung it again. It is sad but, for whatever reason, our efforts were not to see the light of day as a record. Still, the day was unforgettable, ending with a group of us, including May, attending a most moving performance of Poulenc’s "The Carmellites" at Covent Garden.
I often play my recording of The Messiah when I have a long car journey, and I sing along with the whole CD, including "All we like sheep have gone astray". I asked May once, why we didn't sing this chorus? She quickly replied: "I think we all like sheep would go astray!"
David and I joined The Bedfords in September 1974 shortly after we were married. May and her family were a large part of our life. We felt a part of a choir family, met lots of different and interesting people and made precious friends. Endless practices were sometimes a chore but without them we would not have reached that enviable standard that our beloved conductor desired.
Christine Burden
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CUTTING IT FINE
May Walley regularly produced magical results with her music and with her “everything-is-possible” attitude she expected everyone else to do the same.
This extended to coach drivers who would be expected to transport the choir to its chosen destination in a fraction of the usual journey time. May had many strengths but map reading and journey times were not among them, she had never shown any inclination for wanting to drive. Consequently the choir’s punctuality was frequently something of a gamble and they were often late arriving for choral competitions.
On one notorious occasion at Buxton they arrived just as their class was finishing. In the jealously competitive world of choral singing this naïve miscalculation was seen by some of their competitors as a tactical ploy. It took some tense negotiation with the organisers before the Bedfords were allowed to sing – and win.
On a trip to Harrogate they had a reasonable excuse. They were going over the moors when the bus broke down. Unfortunately there’s no photographic record of twelve girls in choir dresses pushing the bus over the brow of a hill to get it started again.
Cutting it fine had other implications too. Shoppers in Huddersfield once got more than they bargained for from a Bedfords-style burlesque show. Maggie Smee (nee Cork) recalls: “We were late arriving and had to get changed on the coach. We were driving through the town centre, navigating streets and stopping and starting at junctions while taking our clothes off and trying to keep our modesty intact.”
“On another, marginally more private occasion, we were again late for a festival and in order for all of us to get changed we took over the Gents Loo.”
But in Cardigan with the mixed voice choir there was nowhere for the ladies to change. So they changed in the field outside with the men standing in a ring around them, gallantly facing outwards!
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EVENIN' ALL!
I once attended an evening celebration party held at May’s house. This was around the time that I was regularly playing piano/organ for the Bedford Singers.
There was a lot of singing and dancing and general mirth. As the evening progressed the level of noise increased considerably. May was at the piano and all the party goers were singing at full throttle when the door to the room opened and a policeman stepped in.
There was an immediate stunned silence. But before the officer could open his mouth to speak, May said: “Are you tenor or bass?”
No, he didn’t join in!
Ian Riddle
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FIRST IMPRESSIONS
In 1974, my wife, Christine, and I were new arrivals in Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent. We were quickly impressed by the friendliness of the people in these parts, and were even more encouraged to learn that there was a very accomplished mixed-voice choir in the area, which frequently performed in the church at Penkhull.
In the event, it was a conversation at the hairdresser’s between Christine and Janet Taylor – a long-standing Bedford chorister – that led us, one Sunday morning in September, to the gate of Victoria House, Victoria Road, Newcastle, Staffs.
Janet had given May’s telephone number to Christine and, on the basis of a brief call from a public call-box, May had suggested that we simply turn up at the next choir rehearsal on the Sunday morning. We arrived a little late and stumbled straight into a full rehearsal in May’s lounge. With much embarrassment and apology, we announced ourselves and hoped to find a corner each, in the right section of the choir, in which to become a little less visible.
Within a few minutes of this chaotic induction to the ranks of the Bedford Singers, I thought I had arrived in some sort of heaven. May announced a piece by Haydn called the “Nelson Mass”, and someone kindly thrust into my hand a copy of the vocal score. This was not a piece that I had come across before, so I just took a deep breath and resolved not to make a sound for the duration – and I probably didn’t! The Bedfords, you see, were well-acquainted with the Nelson Mass (a.k.a, Imperial Mass, 1798), and the glorious music that flowed – grand, exuberant, vibrant, lyrical – in super-immediate Victoria House lounge surround-sound, transported me into a world of music-making that immediately lifted my spirits
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I didn’t know much about the technicalities of choral singing at this point, but even I could figure out that this band of singers, under May Walley’s inspiration and direction, with their superb quartet of soloists, were a musical force of a sort that one would rarely meet during a lifetime. Joining this merry band of singers had to be a very good move indeed!
So began our journey with the legendary and inspirational May Walley and her Bedford Singers. We fondly remember it as one of the best times of our lives. We were to stay with the choir for about sixteen wonderful but all-too-short years – making lovely friends, discovering swathes of amazing music and being part of something very special and worthwhile. What a privilege and what happy days!
David Burden
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MY FIRST MEETING WITH MAY
In 1996 I was coerced into singing a solo at a “Songs from the Shows” production at my church, (Wolstanton Methodist).
My Grandfather, who was a pianist, organist and composer, was present and, having heard me sing, encouraged me to take seek voice training. I asked him if he knew of a teacher. He said there was only one worthwhile teacher around these parts and her name was May Walley – but he didn’t know if she was still alive or not!
Coincidentally, a neighbour had just joined the Bedfords and I learned that May was most certainly still with us and very much alive. I rang her to enquire about lessons and, although she had a full teaching schedule, she asked me to come along and bring a piece of music to perform for her. An obvious choice was the solo that I had sung at the “show” which was ‘Anthem’ from the musical “Chess” which I quite liked.
After introductions she placed the sheet music on the imposing grand piano and played whilst I, rather nervously, sang. When we finished May looked at me and said I had a fine voice; she wasn’t sure whether I was a tenor or baritone but there were some lovely top notes there, so we’d go for tenor. She then slapped the sheet music hard and told me that the song was rubbish!
Philip Cartwright
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A DiISCIPLINED APPROACH
When I started at Newcastle High School in 1959, the first and second year forms each had in their timetable a weekly singing class with May Walley. May somehow managed to get a natural, mellow sound out these boys’ treble voices, even though we didn’t take it all that seriously.
One of the pieces we sometimes sang was Creation’s Hymn by Beethoven, which includes the line: He cometh laughing, His glory unfoldeth
A friend of mine suggested a modification: He cometh whacking, His slipper he holdeth.
This was a reference to the predilection among some members of staff for wielding a slipper – or more usually a hard-soled gym shoe – which they aimed at young boys’ bottoms in the name of discipline, but often with a rather sinister relish.
Next time we sang the song, I adopted the new version. Perhaps I sang a bit louder to show off to the classmates around me, but I wasn’t on the front row and there were some 30 other boys also singing to give cover.
May stopped instantly, swung round on the piano stool and fixed me with a glare. I felt myself colouring, dispelling any doubts she might have had as to whether she had got the right person. She said: “You know something, don’t you?” I froze, while the tittering which had burst out around me quickly spread to the whole class. She said nothing more, and we started again. Such was her strength of personality that she rarely had to resort to slipper-wielding stunts.
I was amazed at her ear – to pick out one rebel so accurately. No wonder May’s choirs carried off sacksful of trophies. After that I stuck faithfully to the original texts.
Despite such an inauspicious start to our relationship, May had a profound influence on my future. I had piano lessons with her for several years, but when I took up the oboe her support and encouragement was crucial in my decision to make a career as an orchestral player.
Music was hardly taken seriously as a subject in those early days at Newcastle High School and anyone considering it as a career was regarded as a maverick. But May stood up to the Establishment, organised lessons for me and offered me numerous solo opportunities at her choir concerts. She was instrumental in giving me the self-confidence and self-belief that enabled me to achieve what I really wanted to do.
John Digney
After the High School John went to study at the Royal Manchester College of Music. He spent 2 years with the West Riding of Yorkshire Wind Quintet before joining the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra as sub-principal oboe, then the Bournemouth Sinfonietta as principal oboe. In 1983 he moved to Scotland as principal oboe with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
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JOINING THE VICTORIA CONSORT
May had a dozen or so singers hand-picked to perform works that were in one way or another beyond the powers of us hoi polloi Bedfords. These were the Victoria Consort. The particular works they were doing included Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, written less than 3 years before. It wasn’t easy, so they were practising it for months.
We Bedfords rehearsed in the church at the corner of Havelock Place on Sunday mornings, and the Consort after the Bedfords. Loving to hear the Bernstein, I stayed to listen. The week before the concert, May realized she needed more ballast in the Consort – the two young basses in it were fine but didn’t have the weight of tone to support it. She asked me if I could join it. Of course I could – I had the weekend plus 3 days before the concert! I worked at the notes and the Hebrew words, cramming so hard it’s been impossible ever to forget them. Dr Elliot Isaacson, a staunch supporter of May and the Penkhull Festival, helped us with the Hebrew. We did OK.
Geoff Rainbow
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LLANGOLLEN
The Bedford Singers’ string of successes at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod in the ‘50s and ‘60s was remarkable, and possibly record-breaking. There can be few other choirs that achieved four wins and ten places in the first three overall.
Their first win in the Ladies class came in 1956 (pictured) and they won again in 1957. In 1958 they came 4th but a second place in 1959 heralded a return to 1st prize position in 1960 and they won again in 1964. Overall the Ladies achieved four first places, three second and three third. The imposing, and rather hefty awards made an impressive line-up on May’s grand piano.
In 1976 May, who was always looking for a new challenge, entered the choir in the Mixed Choirs class not exceeding 80 voices. They were never to share the Ladies’ success, which led to much leg-pulling at choir practices. At their first attempt they were placed 3rd out of 28, behind 2 choirs from Iron Curtain countries. Nevertheless, with other choirs placed in the first three in their class, the Bedfords were invited to sing again in the big marquee. They performed their own choice, Britten’s Gloriana Dances.
In 1977, seven months after Britten’s death, the choir sang Sacred and Profane (written 1974). As it was Jubilee Year the stage of the main tent was decorated with a giant crown of flowers. The Bedfords again entered the Mixed Choirs. They had a new bass, Gwion Thomas, and a new tenor, Steve Harper. Despite these assets, they were pipped to a podium place, coming 4th behind Cantorion Ardwyn from Cardiff, a Bulgarian Choir, and Brownhills Co-op Choral Society who took their third place by just one mark.
They tried only once more in 1978 when a Hungarian choir won. Shortly afterwards one of the Welsh choir’s basses, Lewis Jones, became manager of the bank where Gwion worked, so Gwion brought him along. But by now May had her sights on other goals and the Bedfords never entered another competition.
Bob Dulson
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MUSICAL SOIREES
May's fund-raising dinners at her home in the ‘80s and ‘90s were magnificent events. As many as 30 people were squeezed in and treated to a wonderful meal of 5 or 6 courses.
The bigwigs sat round a large table in the dining-room bay window; lesser mortals at the smaller table. Any choir members were sent down to the cellar! May and Ann O'Leary cooked everything. Sheila had done the shopping and, sometimes with assistants, sometimes not, washed up.
Brenda Rainbow was regularly drafted in as a waitress along with younger choir members, the requirements being to be very slim and very quick. She remembers how stressful it was, but good fun, and enjoyed eating the remains from the serving-dishes. Choir chairman, Peter Scott, was the suave wine-waiter.
Finally, the diners were ushered to the lounge for their musical entertainment. Memorable was when bass-baritone Ian Wallace sang (he had been the speaker at the ISM Meeting in the afternoon), and when Kate Snape sang Frauenliebe und Leben. May would usually be the able and sensitive accompanist
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Geoff Rainbow
Philip Cartwright adds: My wife Karen and I fondly remember the dinner parties at Victoria House. The first was daunting for both of us, especially when May’s friend Sheila, whom we had not met before, answered the door dressed in formal frock and apron and introduced herself as the maid! We thought she was serious.
May made us feel very much at home and, after introducing us to everyone, made sure that we were comfortable, and of course well fed. The meal was followed by a gathering in the spacious music room and those of us who were singers (and some who weren’t) were “asked” to sing an aria/song or two. Upon leaving, Karen and I wondered how on earth an 87 year old lady could manage to prepare such a lavish meal for so many then spend the rest of the evening accompanying at the piano
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SINGING LESSON SURPRISES
I will always treasure my time with May; the fun during lessons, my introduction to oratorio, opera, lieder, English song and of course Benjamin Britten.
After about five lessons May entered me in the Newcastle Music Festival. As lieder is essentially a duet between singer and accompanist we both won the male lieder class and the lieder final.
Through her excellent and careful teaching; stance, breathing, voice-production, etc., we went on to have considerable success in various music festivals.
Early during my second year with her she produced an oratorio score and we looked at the first tenor aria. I did my best to sing it through and after a few weeks managed to make a reasonable job of it. May then informed me that I would have to learn all the tenor recitatives and arias because I would be singing them in performance at the Penkull Festival later that year. The oratorio was Handel’s “Theodora”! This was my introduction to and my first oratorio. To cap it all she added that I would be the only amateur soloist (so, no pressure!) and that the alto would be international countertenor James Bowman!
I have many fond memories of my lessons with May which as well as phrase-shaping and dynamics at times might include furniture removals, re-lighting the gas boiler and bathroom repairs!
Philip Cartwright
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TALE OF THE "C"
At the Bedford’s staged performance of Britten’s Noye’s Fludde in St. Paul’s Church Newcastle on 22 September 1994, Pamela Liebeck was the principal cello.
Well into the performance May was frantically mouthing an instruction to Pamela which she interpreted as “the C, the C”.
Confident that the note was not indicated in her part but supposing it would help somebody somewhere she played the note as loudly as she could. Not only was it discordant and unhelpful but, disconcertingly, May was still frantically repeating, “the C, the C”.
It was not until some pause in the conducting and May pointed over Pamela’s head that the bemused cellist was moved to look round to find that part of the stage set behind her was falling over – the waves of the sea!
Peter Scott
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REHEARSAL VENUES
There were always extra and last minute rehearsals before every festival the choir entered. Some of these were held in the most unlikely places.
With so many competitors gathered from all over the world, space in Llangollen at Eisteddfod time can be hard to find. Over the years the choir rehearsed in a car park, under bridges, in the cattle market and on the Llangollen Canal towpath.
Perhaps the most unusual was at Newcastle Festival in the Municipal Hall in the ‘60s. May asked her son Robert to go and check out some space in the basement. He returned giving the all clear and 40 members of the Ladies choir descended the stairs into the Gents toilets.
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PRACTICE FOR PERFECTION- WELL, MOSTLY
The coach journey on the way provided always valuable rehearsal time. In the days when the choir was regularly competing at festivals (‘50s and ‘60s) there were few regulations on safety or the use of seat belts. Sixty girls charged round the bus, swapping places, moving from their friends to sit with their voice section. Then May would stand, conducting for at least an hour while the bus hurtled across the countryside. Today’s law enforcers would have a pink fit.
Once, on the way to Southport, five minutes of out Newcastle, May got everyone to move and sit in their sections – sops in front, seconds in the middle, altos at the back – and the rehearsal got under way. However, after a comfort stop near Chester they all piled back on the bus and sat anywhere, forgetting who they had been sitting by before.
At the venue, the choir was preparing to go on stage and May, as she usually did, was putting people in their place in line. But one was missing! Where was she? Everybody’s heart sank. The Bedford Ladies regularly found success at Southport but the storytellers don’t recall if they won or not on this occasion. Their focus, and May’s, was elsewhere.
As soon as the coach returned to the Potteries, May hotfooted it to the girl’s home with profuse apologies. Fortunately, the young lady in question, who had been left behind in the loo in Chester, had had the wit to contact the local police. The Cheshire constabulary ferried her to the county border and their Staffordshire colleagues took her home. She was fine – but she never came to another rehearsal!
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FREUNDSCHAFT SCHLIEßEN – MAKING FRIENDS
The Bedford Singers’ first visit to Rinteln in Germany was in 1978. This was to lead to a friendship with the Rintelner Madrigalchor that was to last for more than a decade and include eight exchange visits.
Rinteln is a small town in Lower Saxony on the banks of the River Weser, just 20 km downstream from Hamelin, of Pied Piper fame.
The German choir already had a “twinning” arrangement with a choir from Belgium and, seemingly, wanted to make it “triplets”. The initial approach came from Mike Middleton, a major with the BAOR. Mike taught in the Prince Rupert School in Rinteln (one of the schools for the children of the British forces stationed in Germany) and was a member of the Rintelner Madrigalchor, along with his German wife, Doris, and daughter Diana.
Mike decided to contact his former university tutor in England, Eric Dickins, to ask if he knew of any suitable choirs. As luck would have it, Eric worked in the German department at Keele University where a fellow lecturer was Roger Jones, a member and chairman of the Bedford Singers. The Bedfords soon had an invitation to Germany.
The highlight of their first together concert was to be the 8-voice Magnificat by Almeida. The Rintelners’ conductor, Erich Söfker, had discovered a manuscript of the piece in Lisbon University library and the plan was to perform it with the Bedfords as Choir 1 and the Rintelners as Choir 2.
The trip to Germany, however, was not without incident. Having set off from the Potteries on time, the bus had a puncture on the motorway – and the spare was punctured too. So the choir arrived at Heathrow three hours later than planned, long after the scheduled check-in time. Everyone feared they had missed the flight. There was then a further hold-up when May Walley was stopped and searched at security for carrying a suspicious item revealed on X-ray. It turned out that her umbrella, which she always kept behind her pantry door at home in Newcastle, contained a potato!
Fortunately a go-slow by baggage handlers had delayed all flights. So, as planned, the choirs were able to sing the Almeida in the beautiful baroque church in Rinteln. The work featured on the Penkhull programme that year and the choir gave it its first London performance in Southwark Cathedral that November as part of a concert with Leslie Head and the Kensington Symphony. It was also included on an LP that the Bedfords later recorded at Keele with solos by Kate Snape, Marjorie Seddon and Gwion Thomas.
The following year, 1979, the Madrigalchor came to sing at the Penkhull Festival in September. Their members stayed at Keele with Bedford choristers hosting them for meals. In 1981 the Bedford Singers returned to Germany, staying again in the youth hostel, at Easter. It snowed. The visit this time included a trip to Hamelin, looking round the town in the morning, rehearsing in the church for 21/2 hours then performing for 2 hours. From there it was straight back to repeat the programme in Rinteln church. The Rintelners had a superb tenor in their midst, Karl Appel, who had also been a member of the world-famous Gächinger Kantorei for many years. He featured in the programme which included Komm, Jesu, Komm and D. Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater. Both works were included in the Penkhull programme later that year.
The next time the Madrigalchor came to England the Bedfords put them up in their own homes. The schedule included a visit to Lichfield Cathedral. Knowing that the Cathedral did not have a guide to the city in German, Geoff Rainbow prepared one and asked two of his young German “lodgers” to OK it, which they did.
By now the two choirs had developed a real rapport and, according to Roger Jones, May was as popular with the German choir as she was with her own choristers. He said: “She got on very well with their conductor, Erich Söfker, and the members of the German choir showed great sympathy and understanding when she chose to honour the arrangement to visit Rinteln so shortly after the sudden death of her husband Harry in 1985. She showed immense courage and professionalism although her heart must have been breaking.”
The schedule for the choir’s third visit in 1985 included a day trip to Goslar, the heavily guarded DDR border and the top of the Brocken, the highest peak in northern Germany. Their programme included Easter music from The Messiah on the Easter Sunday morning.
The Germans were to come twice more to the Potteries, in 1987 and again in 1993, on this last occasion conducted by Karl Appel. Between these visits the Bedford went for their fourth and final time to Rinteln, giving two concerts there and two in Erlangen, a city twinned with Stoke-on-Trent.
Many friendships developed between the two choirs over the years and some Bedfords and Rintelners keep in regular touch to this day.
Bob Dulson
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WHAT, AT OUR AGE?
I tend to hold up May as an example when I hear folks rambling on about not doing this or that...“at our age”.
I remember her conducting at Penkhull. Was she 94 at the time? I keep that memory as justification for giving no concessions to the years ... as I explained to my friends who remonstrated with me when I fell out of a large apple tree in late January. It needed pruning and it wasn't my fault that the ladder bent and collapsed. Naturally, I landed in a perfect judo break-fall and still remember the beautiful, if blurred, image of a tree moving rapidly upwards!
John Fryer
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WETTED IN WALES
A wet day in Wales, and the chapel in Pontrhydfendigaid earmarked for our rehearsal stayed locked. We found another room but this one had competition with a loudspeaker relaying events from the main hall.
Someone (I'm not admitting who) pulled a plug or should I say a wire, accidentally, became detached, and the whole system failed. Still we got our practice in!
But, being a day of rain, there was nowhere then to go but the pub where a "competition" developed with the locals as to who could sing most effectively. The eiststeddfod predictably ran late, very late, and the men were well wetted when the time came to sing Old Joe's Gone Fishing on stage. The Bedfords came second to the London Student Chorale, the adjudicators commenting that our men sounded indeed like typical sailors! May was not impressed as became evident once we had boarded the coach.
John Fryer
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CHANNEL ISLAND INFAMY
In 1956 the Bedford Ladies crowned their many competitive festival successes by winning the major award at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod.
Adjudicator Alec Redshaw had been so impressed by May and the choir’s performances that, at the Channel Islands Festival the following February, he was inspired to refer to one particularly talented woman conductor as “The May Walley of Jersey”.
The local reporter duly took note but relied – rashly, as it turned out – on his hearing. For the headline that subsequently appeared in the local paper described the choir leader as “The Main Worry of Jersey!”
Bob Dulson
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