Choir’s Concerts Sold Out

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31362, 6 May 1967, Page 3

Choir’s Concerts Sold Out

(Special Crspdt. N.Z.P.A.) SYDNEY, May 5. The choir of the Christchurcii H a rmonic Society ended its first series of concerts in Sydney last night with the last of three performances of Dvorak’s “S tab a t Mater.” “It was just wonderful,” said the conductor, Mr W. R. Hawkey, today. “Everything seemed to click last night, and I think the choir turned in its best performance yet” Today the choir’s 141 members will face an arduous programme of rehearsals which will keep them busy from 10 a.m. until 9 o’clock tonight. The next concert is tomorrow night when the choir will Sing in the first Australian performance of Schoenberg’s “Survivor from Warsaw" with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, which will again be conducted by Dean Dixon. The choir will also sing Brahms’s “Requiem.” These two works will be performed at a second concert on Monday. The choir, which is performing in. the Australian Broadcasting' Commission’s subscription concert series, has so far been seen by nearly 6000 people, and its remaining five Sydney concerts are sold out.

But it has not been all work and no play for the singers. Whenever they can snatch an hour or so free from rehearsals they are touring the city, sight-seeing and shopping. The choir has already had a birthday in the week it has been in Sydney. A National Airways Corporation pilot, Mr

Watts, whose wife, Janice, is also a member, celebrated his birthday this week. Rehear-

sisals were interrupted while > | members serenaded him with -I“Happy Birthday.”