★★★½☆ Snippets from Australia’s future choristers and a provocative Mozart Requiem.

City Recital Hall, Sydney
April 29, 2016

The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra has put on a characteristically bold and thoughtful concert, entitled Mozart Requiem: 100 Voices. In it they join forces with the Brandenburg Choir and the Brandenburg Young Voices, a choir comprised of children from some sixteen schools from around Sydney. Artistic Director Paul Dyer pointed out before the music began that this concert was about more than itself, since it was a chance to give the next crop of Australian singers a go, while also showcasing soloists who themselves were once in the youth choir. As Richard Gill regularly reminds us in his Limelight column, music education is indispensable to one’s school experience, and Dyer and the Brandenburg Orchestra should be congratulated on their promoting music education.

The first half consisted of a number of shorter works from the Renaissance to the present, beginning (in reverse chronological order) with Festive Alleluia, composed by the Founder and Artistic Director of Sydney Children’s Choir, Lyn Williams. The choir began the song from the back of the hall, enthusiastically thronging onto the stage, all the while executing a musical canon with impressive...