Sydney Philharmonia Choirs’ artistic director Brett Weymark was in a car listening to ABC radio when he first heard the music of Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks. The piece was Musica Dolorosa for string orchestra and it so affected him that he had to pull over, close his eyes and just listen.

Conductor Brett Weymark and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs © Simon Crossley-Meates

Spiritual, serene and calming, this is music for tough times and it is particularly suited to forces on a smaller, more intimate scale, hence Weymark’s decision to include three of Vasks’ works alongside two new Australian pieces in a program featuring the SPC’s Chamber Choir, boosted by members of the young VOX ensemble and a dozen string players from Sydney Philharmonia. The concert was performed in the beautiful and appropriate setting of Sydney’s St Andrews’ Cathedral.

The son of a clergyman, growing up under the Soviet regime was not easy for the 76-year-old Vasks and his music often reflects this. There are moments of still beauty punctuated by shocking dissonance, or “gunfire and chorales” as Magnus Johnson, leader of the British Navarra Quartet, describes it.

There was little to be shocked...