For Those Who Remain

Much of the world’s most stunning music comes from places of love and loss. For its last concert of 2025, the Blackstone-Ipswich Cambrian Choir presents two such works, composed a century and a half apart, which both speak to us today on themes of grief, consolation, and the transition from sorrow to peace.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), the great German romantic composer, was among the first to compose a requiem aimed at comforting the living, rather than entirely focussed on the departed. A German Requiem (completed in 1868) sets German biblical texts rather than the traditional Latin Requiem Mass.

Swedish composer Mårten Jansson (b.1965) approached his Requiem Novum (2022) similarly with a view to comforting those who mourn, interspersing the Latin Mass text with poetry by American Charles Anthony Silvestri, from the perspective of the departed soul.

This beautiful and uplifting programme, featuring both a pillar of western choral music and an Australian premiere performance, is not to be missed.

Tickets at https://www.trybooking.com/DFCZQ