The Canberra Intervarsity Choral Festival 2026 and Canberra Festival Orchestra present a celebration of life and death, continuing a 76-year tradition of Australian University Choral Festivals.
Olivia Swift conducts the choir in Brahms’ A German Requiem, a deeply human response to loss and consolation. Setting German biblical texts to music, Brahms writes not a mass for the dead, but music for the living. The work moves from grief toward comfort, closing in a place of quiet, hard-won peace.
Shilong Ye, conducting the orchestra, has selected music from the 19th & 20th centuries to contrast with the requiem, providing a lyrical program in the 2nd half of the concert that continues the Cantabile through the Canberra Festival Orchestra. From the tragic tale of a disfigured musical genius haunting the Paris Opera House to the Slavic folk music of Bohemia, these masterpieces have been and continue to be well loved by concert-goers for the past 148 years.
The concert finishes with Timothy Takach’s Everything Sings, a radiant contemporary celebration of sound, connection, and communal voice. Playful, reflective, and quietly joyful, the work reminds us that music lives everywhere, and that singing together is itself an act of meaning.
Program:
Choir and Orchestra:
Johannes Brahms A German Requiem
Orchestra:
Andrew Lloyd Webber (arr Calvin Custer) Selections from the Phantom of the Opera
Johannes Brahms Academic Festival Overture
Aram Khachaturian (arr Hans Swarsenski) Sabre Dance
Antonín Dvořák Slavonic Dances Op.46 No.5, 7,8
Choir finale:
Timothy C. Takach Everything Sings