Sydney University Graduate Choir

he Choir’s 2019 concert season opens with Gossec’s ground-breaking Messe des mortswhich made the composer famous overnight. This inventive work was truly ahead of its time, and is said to have influenced the requiems of both Mozart and Berlioz. Who had ever thought to use a ‘distant wind orchestra’ in a Requiem before? Born in a small village in what is now Belgium, Gossec spent all of his successful musical career in Paris.

Our August concert features Puccini’s youthful Messa di Gloria. This work, written as a graduation exercise, already reveals much of the mastery of his mature operatic works. It is thus a fitting work for a concert featuring the finalists of the 2019 Joan Carden Award competition. These exceptional young singers, at the beginning of their careers, will demonstrate their talents for judges and audience alike as they perform famous opera arias by the great masters.

Our 2019 Sydney Sings...TM concert presents Brahms’ A German Requiem, a timeless work, full of comfort and hope. Not based on the traditional Latin text, this Requiem focuses rather on the living, beginning with the words ‘Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted’. Brahms himself admitted that he would gladly have named the work ‘A Human Requiem’. Our Guest Choir will join us once again for this concert, which will also include Brahms’ Tragic Overture.

The final concert of the Choir’s 2019 season features two rarely performed masterworks from the German Romantic period which deserve to be heard more often: Schumann’s powerful and very individualistic Mass in C minor and Rheinberger’s lyrical and very personal Star of Bethlehem. The latter is based on words by the composer’s poet wife and presents a heart-warming and joyful portrayal of the Christmas story.