Troubled times

Last November, a BBC Radio 3 broadcast by the BBC Singers celebrated 60 years of ‘Let the Peoples Sing’, the European Broadcasting Union’s competition for amateur choirs from across the continent. Listening to it brought back vivid memories for me, as I had competed in it in the early 1970s. The circumstances in which I and my fellow pupils at Victoria College, Belfast took part were, however, anything but ordinary.

Our recording session for the 1971 competition was particularly memorable. We were excused from afternoon lessons in order to have a final rehearsal in the school hall before walking half a mile or so down the road to BBC Broadcasting House to record our four pieces: Monteverdi’s , Weelkes’s , a Swiss folksong and Martin Shaw’s . While we were singing we heard the urgent sound of emergency sirens, but that was a regular backdrop to life in Northern Ireland. Then we were interrupted by a fellow pupil sent to tell us that there was a car bomb