Bach's Mass in B Minor Will Be the Final Performances of the Sydney Chamber Choir's Season
The performance is on Saturday, 22 November 2025 at 5.00pm.
By: Stephi Wild Oct. 10, 2025
Celebrate the brilliance of Bach's last and greatest choral masterpiece: his magnificent Mass in B minor in this final, glorious performance of the Sydney Chamber Choir's 50th anniversary season.
Bach's music resonates beyond place and time. Reaching up to the splendour of heaven, it draws on the full spectrum of human emotion - grief and joy intertwined, anguish and elation soaring in intricate harmonies.
Conductor and artistic director Sam Allchurch invites music lovers to dive into the rich beauty of the Baroque as the Choir “explores a choral experience that elevates the human spirit with every note. More than a concert, this is an exploration of truth, humanity, and the sheer scale of emotion that only Bach can convey.”
Accompanied by the Muffat Collective orchestra, led by Matthew Greco, with soloists Sara Macliver (soprano), Helen Sherman (mezzo), Andrew Goodwin (tenor) and David Greco (bass), the Sydney Chamber Choir is set to create a shattering climax to an already extraordinary year in which they have performed Bach's work in his own birthplace, walked in his footsteps (Leipzig, Dresden, Berlin) and sung in concert with leading German choirs - both home and away!
For Allchurch, this is deeply personal music, a definitive work of the Western music canon that as a young music student he listened to over and over again - even on the ferry on his way to school!
And for the iconic choir he leads - in its historic 50th year - the B minor Mass stands as the dramatic apex of a path they have walked from well before this momentous year.
Note also that Sydney artists, David Greco and Matthew Greco are brothers!
Inspired and inspiring, Bach completed the B minor mass in 1749, the year before his death, to a scale that was – for its time - inconceivable. Two hours in length, with five-part choir, four soloists and full orchestra, it was over a hundred years before it was performed in full. Rendering the full Latin Mass – unusual for Lutheran Germany of Bach and his contemporaries – it remains one of the most popular and challenging large-scale choral works of all time. Hear it performed by one of Australia's outstanding ensembles, as it was meant to be heard, in the spectacular acoustic of the City Recital Hall!
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