Birthday cake and Brahms

Next month is party time for the members of the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir, who reminisce on 21 years of song with Arminta Wallace

Every Wednesday evening an exuberant group of people assembles in RTÉ's Studio One in Donnybrook. For three hours, their day jobs are forgotten as they concentrate on the musical matter in hand: rehearsals for the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir.

Some of them have been doing it since the choir was formed - which means, pretty much, every Wednesday for the past 21 years.

As part of its 21st anniversary celebration - which gets into top gear with a performance of Brahms's German Requiem with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra at the National Concert Hall on May 6th, complete with a party for the choir afterwards - a questionnaire was handed out to members of the choir, asking for some basic personal information as well as questions about why they joined the RTÉ Philharmonic as opposed to any other choral group. The answers showed the membership to be as enthusiastic as one would expect - but considerably more varied. Singing in a high-quality choir, it seems, appeals to all sorts of people in 21st-century Ireland. This despite the time commitment involved - besides the weekly rehearsal, there will be three extra rehearsals at the National Concert Hall in the week of any given performance - and the fact that some members travel from as far away as Dundalk and Tipperary on a weekly basis.

The RTÉ Philharmonic draws singers from all over Ireland and from various parts of the UK, as well as those with more exotic birthplaces: Hong Kong, Perth, Budapest, Brunei. Occupations, meanwhile, range from art curator to hospital pharmacist via credit controller for a debt collection agency - though a disproportionate number are teachers of one kind or another, including music teachers. One member took a few months out recently to work as a radio presenter on Choice FM in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; another is a second cousin, twice removed, of the late English tenor Peter Pears.

"I heard the ad on the radio," says founder member Noreen Hamilton, by way of explaining why she joined the choir in the first place. "I had been a teacher, and for various reasons I had to give up in the summer of 1983. I had the most awful year at home with three babies under the age of four - not what I was used to - and at the end of that year I was here in the kitchen one day and I heard the ad for the choir. I just thank my lucky stars I got in there." Hamilton had no experience of choral singing, though she had studied music as part of her arts degree, and found the audition process "terrifying".

For another founder member, RTÉ radio producer Bernadette Comerford, however, it was equally so - even though she had been a member of various choirs since her school days.

"We had a fantastic music teacher at Loreto in Dalkey, and would you believe, she's still there - Mother Francis Jerome; she's 80-something now and still taking the orchestra. We just adored singing. I remember reading an autobiographical piece by Germaine Greer which said something similar - she went to a convent school in Sydney, and she wrote about the joy of singing the plainchant and everything. Well, we got that in Dalkey. At college I was in the choir briefly, but I never really took to it. Then I saw this ad for a new choir and and I thought, 'Gosh - I don't do any music any more'. So I went. I think I sang Hark, Hark the Lark. It was really nerve-wracking."

But it was also the beginning of a long and rewarding musical journey which has seen the choir perform works as different as Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky, Mahler's Eighth Symphony and, most recently, Poulenc's Stabat Mater. It has made recordings for the Naxos Marco Polo label and routinely sings in languages of all shapes and sizes; French, Russian, Latin, German and - memorably, in the case of its premiere recording of Gerard Victory's piece Ultima Rerum - Navajo.

"People are attracted by the repertoire as much as anything else," says founder member Brian McIvor. "We've had a crack at things as diverse as the opera The Bohemian Girl and Britten's War Requiem." The latter performance, in 1986, was a definite highlight for him, he says. "We were singing it in St Patrick's Cathedral with the banners of Irish first World War regiments hanging there. You're singing about the futility of war, and then you look up at the banners and realise how many of our guys didn't come back."

Another highlight was singing at the accession ceremony for new EU member states: "Okay, we were singing to a backing track," he says, "but we were literally standing behind the 25 heads of state, and it was our biggest ever audience. We were seen by a couple of hundred million people, live on television. It would be easy to be cynical about it. But some of those leaders were in tears. For the Tony Blairs of this world, it might have been just another photo opportunity, but for some of the eastern European leaders it was closure for the second World War. And we were part of that."

Apart from the emotional impact of the music there is, according to Hamilton, a physical side to singing which makes it a very visceral activity. "Of course," she says, "there's an intellectual element when you have to work out harmonies and so on, but when you're actually singing, it's . . . I don't know. It's straight into your insides somewhere. I find it very energising. I always come home high as a kite on a Wednesday night, so I think there must be something in it that gives you energy. People who are into music are generally a very cheerful lot - perhaps that has something to do with it."

The rehearsal process, and working with a particular conductor, also has a great deal to do with it, as Comerford explains. "Our current conductor, Mark Duley, is amazingly patient in the way that he can take an amateur choir and put all the elements together, building it up and building it up. But the really brilliant thing about Mark is his sense of humour. He's got all these wonderful sayings. He talks about 'one-buttock singing' - that's where you're sitting on the edge of your seat instead of relaxing back and crossing your legs. Or if we're not together, he'll say: 'You're like a jellyfish on a lead'."

John Hayes, meanwhile, says he has learned more about how to run a business from the choir than from anywhere else - strong words from a man who took a year out to do an MBA, and is the managing partner of a firm of consulting engineers. "In a choir if one person's line is wrong, the whole thing is a disaster - so there's a very strong sense of community and teamwork. I also think Mark Duley is quite remarkable. He has a wonderful way of mixing a ferocious work ethic with delirious fun; you'll be laughing your backside off half the time, and yet if you don't deliver he will cut you in two."

As Hayes wryly notes, music has the capacity to constantly surprise. "I remember the first time I heard Beethoven's Missa Solemnis I said 'Oh, yuck - this thing is awful'. I mean, I'd as happily listen to Coldplay as I would to Mozart. But we sang it at the opening of the Choral Festival in Cork and it was the most amazing thing I've ever sung in my life."

If the past 21 years have been eventful, what of the years to come? The choir is constantly renewing its membership and will be auditioning later this month. It has recently recruited its first female tenor, Margaret Healy Doyle, which is quite a departure and - given that tenors of the male variety are increasingly thin on the ground - a welcome one. "My sister was the first female brass player taken on by RTÉ," says Healy Doyle, "so I feel I'm following in her footsteps by being the first female tenor."

The work of the Philharmonic is also, increasingly, being tied in with that of the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra - which is, says McIvor, a new and thrilling choral ball game. "In the middle of one of the rehearsals for the Shostakovich symphonies earlier this year we were sitting waiting for our six minutes of music at the end. And we found ourselves being drawn into this work, and becoming very present and very much part of it.

"It's a great way of experiencing music right from the inside. It's not a filling-in thing. You're actually part of the action."

The RTÉ Philharmonic will perform Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem at the National Concert Hall on May 6. Auditions for the choir will be held on May 10 and 11; further information on 01-2082977