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With five concerts touring across Melbourne, Geelong and wider Victoria, the Australian Chamber Choir has announced its 2023 season. The Choir will also continue to provide livestreaming and on-demand viewing, a service which allowed it to keep driving forward across pandemic lockdowns and made its programs available nationwide. For three concerts in Dunkeld, it also offers special fine dining and accomodation packages in partnership with the Royal Mail Hotel.
Australian Chamber Choir. Photo © Jessica Pigg
“The adventure continues. From beloved masterpieces to newly-commissioned works; from regularly-performed audience favourites to serene and elegant works that are little-known, the Australian Chamber Choir’s 2023 program offers a wealth of music,” says Artistic Director Douglas Lawrence.
“I find it exciting when newly discovered music that is 500 old is as fresh as works being composed now. My aim is to bring many styles and periods together to richly complement each other in programs that will delight and intrigue.”
The season opens with Magic, Miracles and Mysteries, which presents works by John Wilbye, Elgar, Owens, Martin and Marenzio among others. The concert will also be livestreamed. “We all need magic in our lives. Miracles are even better and life presents endless mysteries,” says Lawrence. The concert marks Di Lasso’s musical imagining of Jesus’ first miracle and the 400th anniversary of William Byrd’s death with Ye sacred muses and Sing joyfully in a program examining where music, love and magic overlap. It also includes the first performance of The gate of the Year, a newly commissioned work by Melbourne composer Alexander Owens.
Mozart’s Requiem was the composer’s final work for choir and orchestra, and remained unfinished after his death. It was commissioned by Count Franz von Walsegg, who often presented commissioned works as his own – and had perhaps intended to with this one. Lawrence considers it as a “staggering work” that’s “always new and always overwhelming for performers and audience”. The Australian Chamber Choir will perform it at Macedon’s Church of the Resurrection on 20 May, and Melbourne’s The Sot’s Church on 27 May.
In August, Sistine Chapel aims to capture works written for the grand structure and its music, capturing the journey to heaven. Allegri’s famous Miserere is complemented by the music of his predecessors Palestrina, Josquin, Victoria and di Lasso. It is also the second concert to be available for livestream and on-demand viewing.
Wine cellars of Dunkeld’s Royal Mail Hotel, which offers dining and accomodation packages with the ACC. Photo © Emily Weaving
“Mozart, as a 12-year-old child, is said to have written down Miserere after hearing it once during a visit to Rome. I guess the beauty of the piece and the other-worldly ambience of the Sistine Chapel had a profound effect on him, just as it does on people today,” says Lawrence.
For the fourth concert Buckingham Palace, Lawrence highlights the “exciting field” of works that complements the “magnificent occasions” hosted by the British royal family, including works from Stanford, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Howells, and Parry.
“Everyone is wondering what music will be played at the Coronation of King Charles in 2023. The glorious music, along with the staggering pageantry is what makes these royal celebrations memorable. Handel with his Zadok the Priest was just one of the many composers to write coronation music for British royalty.” Other works include Benjamin Britten’s Jubilate Deo, written for Prince Phillip in 1961, Elgar’s Nimrod, and George Dyson’s Be Strong, as well as works from the 2023 Coronation and “the last five hundred years of Royal weddings, funerals and coronations”.
In its final concert, Baroque Christmas, the Australian Chamber Choir welcomes in the festive season. With a ‘pick of the pops’ from 1400 to the Baroque period and beyond, the program features little-known seasonal selections from composers including Bach, Hassler, Byrd and Clemens non Papa. Speaking to Limelight in 2020, Lawrence noted how composers would set aside the serious nature of their works in competition for entertaining, joyful pieces to celebrate the season. The ACC8 will also perform works featured on A Baroque Christmas, a CD produced during 2020’s lockdown to supplement its live performance. The program will tour to Dunkeld, Geelong, Terang and Middle Park, and will be livestreamed and available to be watched on demand on the ACC’s website.
“Celebration without end … I think the Germans have more fun at Christmas. That’s the impression I get from the music that Bach wrote for the festive season,” says Lawrence.
“But seriously, throughout the centuries, composers have done their best to write music that will be enjoyed by the whole family at Christmas time. That’s why this program is one of great fun but also deep reflection.”
More about the Australian Chamber Choir’s 2023 season can be found here. Subscribers are able to include the Australian Chamber Choir’s final 2022 concert, Ceremony of Carols, running 26 November – 11 December, as part of a 2023 subscription if they choose.
