Harmonic Society to sing in Sydney

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33382, 14 November 1973, Page 18

Harmonic Society to sing in Sydney

One hundred and sixty members of the Christchurch Harmonic Society will .entertain Australian audiences in the Sydney Opera House and Adelaide’s new Arts Festival Centre from May 8 to May 25. The Harmonic Society has been invited by the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Its concert in the Sydney Opera House will be the first performance in the building of a choir of international repute, at the A.B.C.’s invitation.

Mr W. W. R. Hawkey, the society’s musical director, said last evening that about two-thirds of the choir would go — about 100 female voices and 50 male, at a cost of $3OO a member. This is the choir’s third overseas visit in the last nine years. The selection of works for performance was nominated by the A.B.C. All but one have been sung by the society in the past. The choir will be accompanied in the Opera House by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, under its chief conductor, Willem van Otterloo, in Bach’s Mass in B Minor and Verdi’s Requiem. At Melbourne, accompanied by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under Bogo Leskovic, the choir will sing Frank Martin’s “In Terra Pax,” the Berlioz Te Deum, and Handel’s “Belshazzar.” The Verdi Requiem will be sung again in the Adelaide Arts’ Festival Centre with the South Australian Symphony Orchestra, under Tibor Pual. The concerts will be incorporated into the A.B.C.’s subscription series.