Review: Sydney Philharmonia Choirs 'St Matthew Passion'

Sydney Philharmonia Choirs’ Vox and Chamber ensembles have come together with the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra (ARCO) to present Bach’s St Matthew Passion in the 1841 arrangement of the work by Felix Mendelssohn.

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At times it feels like a revelation, a radically different palette of tone colours, bringing unfamiliar texture and suspense to the score.

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Concertmaster Rachael Beesley and flutist Melissa Farrow bring mellifluous virtuosity to their obligato accompaniments while Teddy Tahu Rhodes shines as a charismatic and eloquent Christus. Finally, the hero of the evening is Andrew Goodwin as the Evangelist, his voice reaching into the heavens with sublime ease.

Harriet Cunningham, Sydney Morning Herald
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St Matthew Passion – Mendelssohn’s 1841 version

The Sydney Philharmonia Choirs (SPC) has premiered in Australia this first historically authentic and rare performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Mendelssohn version, at the Sydney Opera House…Dr Elizabeth Scott, the Associate Music Director of SPC, conducted with a minimalist conducting style, but with maximum effect, the combined Chamber Singers and VOX choirs, the soloists and the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra (ARCO) performing on period instruments.

Bach wrote some very beautiful music for this Passion, with his orchestral accompaniment played brilliantly by ARCO. This includes a mesmerising flute quartet and oboe solo, as well as featured violin parts performed superbly by Rachael Beesly, the Concertmaster and Co-Artistic Director of ARCO.

Shirley Politzer, J-Wire
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Review: St Matthew Passion (Mendelssohn version)

Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra continue to provide audiences with quality historically informed performance firsts in exciting orchestral concerts and recordings. This Holy Thursday that excitement went next level, with a collaboration which presented Mendelssohn’s 1841 arrangement of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, as Mendelssohn would have expressed it at the time.

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Outbursts and high volume and the shifts to choir as characterised groups were achieved with great dramatic force and contrast, well supported by the HIP colours and shapes from Mendelssohn’s ‘Bach-plus’ orchestra paying Mendelssohn’s creatively orchestrated cover version.

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The many fine creative and research strands to this event will hold an important part in Sydney’s performance history, and in the Mendelssohn and Bach performance histories both in Australia and globally. This project showcases a stunning status quo and bright future for HIP performance practice plus choral and vocal music in this country.

Paul Nolan, Sydney Arts Guide
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Review: St Matthew Passion (Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra)

With the Philharmonia’s Chamber and VOX choirs being joined by the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra (ARCO) for this one-off concert under Associate Music Director Elizabeth Scott, a Sydney audience got Australia’s first taste of what [Mendelssohn’s 1841 revival of Bach’s St Matthew Passion] sounded like.

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The mellower sound of the clarinet and basset horn featured enchantingly alongside Melissa Farrow’s flute solo in soprano Penelope Mills’s ariaAus Liebe, will mein Heiland sterben…and ARCO Concertmaster Rachael Beesley’s gut stringed solo violin added a concerto-like feel to the accompaniment of the beautiful pivotal aria Embarme Dich….There were moments of sheer magic – irresistible Mendelssohnian textures over Bach’s glorious tunes – as well as tenderness, majesty and despair.

Steve Moffat, Limelight
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Review: Sydney Philharmonia breathes new life into Bach

What we heard at the Sydney Opera House on Thursday evening was not just Bach, it was Mendelssohn’s Bach: his 1841 version for the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, heard for the first time in Australia in a historically informed performance. This was an ambitious, rich, and at times revelatory collaboration between the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs under Elizabeth Scott, with soloists of exceptional calibre. A partnership I hope we’ll hear again.

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A packed Opera House…(and) an extraordinary collaboration…brought more than just power. It brought tenderness, clarity and, in moments, transcendence.

Pepe Newton, ClassikON
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Review: Midsummer Dreams

Is there a better piece of music by a teenager than Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream? I’ve not heard a HIP version of it before and the different balance between the smaller string section and the older design wind and brass makes for a quite different listening experience: the textures more transparent, the overall sound considerably rawer.

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The second movement of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No.3, Vivace non troppo, is probably the best of the nine individual tracks on the recording; it has everything I want to hear in Mendelssohn.

David Barker, Music Web International
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Thought and love poured into every note of ARCO's new CD

On Thursday the 27th of March, 2025 The Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra will release their newest album Midsummer Dreams. … The result is a carefully curated, historically informed performance that balances precision and passion, transporting the listener as closely to the sound world of Mendelssohn and Beethoven’s 19th century audiences as humanly possible.

If you are looking to simply listen and enjoy, the amount of thought and love that has been poured into every note allows for an equally enriching experience.

Molly Jenkins, ClassikON
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Rachael Beesley and ARCO's Midsummer Dreams album

Hear 3MBS FM host Adrian McEniery and Michael Leighton Jones interview ARCO conductor Rachael Beesley live on Daybreak, 21 March 2025. The trio talk about ARCO’s latest album Midsummer Dreams, and listen to excerpts by Beethoven and Mendelssohn.

Adrian McEniery, 3MBS-FM
Listen to full story (starts at 2:21)

New release from the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra

The Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra releases its newest album Midsummer Dreams on 27 March under the ARCO label. This fourth album of their discography features popular Romantic works by Beethoven and Mendelssohn performed by 41 musicians playing on gut strings, historic winds, natural brass, including a rare ophicleide and timpani.

The anthology begins with a fairytale, ends with a brooding landscape and bounds through a spirited symphony. Midsummer Dreams, roams over a sweep of Romantic visions from Beethoven and Mendelssohn in an Australian premiere recording on period instruments with historically informed performance (HIP).

Sounds Like Sydney
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Album Review: Midsummer Dreams – Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra

The next instalment in the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra’s discography, Midsummer Dreams, is released this March. It is another brilliant live recording, this time from a concert tour of nineteenth century music that took place in July 2023. This recording of the live performance was from The Concourse, Chatswood as part of that tour.

The choice and juxtaposition of this album’s works highlight Mendelssohn and Beethoven’s championing their new approaches within the forms and styles of the old. They refreshed and extended musical practices with new colours, sheens and expression. In turn they catapulted their art form forwards into a vibrant place full of new sound opportunities.

Paul Nolan, Sydney Arts Guide
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A Passion for Bach

Colonial Australians may have struggled with JS Bach’s St Matthew Passion, but the composer’s music quickly found a following Down Under. He is now acknowledged as a genius, of course, but was there something about his rebellious nature, reflected in his music, that appealed to audiences here? A cosmological connection perhaps? Steve Dow talks to musicians and musicologists about why Australians can’t get enough of Bach. (Including ARCO’s performance with Sydney Philharmonia Choirs of the Bach/Mendelsson ‘St Matthew Passion’ on 17 April in the Sydney Opera House).

Steve Dow, Limelight
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Sydney Philharmonia Choirs Easter Concert with ARCO

Join Sydney Philharmonia Choirs for the ultimate Easter musical experience – a rare performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s 1841 interpretation of Bach’s revered St Matthew Passion, performed in historically informed style on 19th-century period instruments and conducted by renowned choral conductor Sydney Philharmonia Choirs’ Associate Music Director, Elizabeth Scott.

This remarkable concert will be presented for one night only in the magnificent surrounds of the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall on Thursday April 17. It’s an exceptional opportunity to experience the music as Mendelssohn himself had envisioned it, alive with the Romantic-era’s expanded volume, colours and textures.

AussieTheatre.com
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ABC Radio - National Afternoons: Interview with Rachael Beesley

Hear host Bridgitte Duclos chat to co-artistic director Rachael Beesley about her work playing and conducting, what makes music Romantic and ARCO’s performances at the Peninsula Summer Music Festival in Flinders, Victoria from 4-5 January.

Bridgitte Duclos, ABC Radio - National Afternoons
Listen to interview. [47:15 - 59:45]

Season Preview 2025: Small to Medium Ensembles

In a packed year, there are old works, new works and collaborations aplenty – in fact, just about everything but the kitchen sink (and maybe even that too if you keep an eye out). Here are some of the chamber music highlights to look out for.

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The Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra begins the year at the Peninsula Summer Music Festival in early January playing quartets from Grieg and Schubert alongside Robert Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben, as well as music by Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn. In April, it presents Mendelssohn’s revival of Bach’s St Matthew Passion with Penelope Mills, Emily Edmonds, Andrew Goodwin, Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Andrew O’Connor as soloists. Its Young Mannheim Symphonists program – Australia’s only national youth orchestra for historical performance – also performs in Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide with a set of symphonies, including Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony.

Paul Ballam-Cross, Limelight
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Season Preview 2025: Orchestras and Choirs

2025 marks the first collaboration between the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, bringing historically informed performance expertise to Mendelssohn’s version of Bach’s St Matthew Passion.

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Sydney Philharmonia Choirs draws me in with a work that I know only from recordings. You could argue that Mendelssohn’s version of Bach’s St Matthew Passion…offers a fascinating insight into the reception history of Bach’s music. Furthermore, the collaboration with the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra promises the kind of performance that will allow you to hear familiar music with fresh ears.

Yvonne Frindle, Limelight
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Casey Radio interview about Peninsula Summer Music Festival

Hear violinist and co-artistic director Rachael Beesley chat to host Leigh Drew on Casey Radio, Melbourne, about the beautiful chamber music and instruments ARCO is bringing to the Peninsula Summer Music Festival.

Hear full interview. (click 20 Dec Showbiz and scroll forward to 1:05:45)

Illuminate - Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra

The Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra (is) another vital brick in the ever-increasing wall of Australian musical brilliance…The orchestra’s latest offering (at the moment available only as a digital download), features three of the late 19th, early 20th century’s greatest composers, Max Bruch, Benjamin Britten and Pyotr Tchaikovsky…played by the ARCO with all the attention to detail that the orchestra is famous for.

Modifications of tempo and rhythm, coupled with various expressive devices of the time, were used by Britten to bring certain accents to his songs, all based on the poems of the French writer Arthur Rimbaud and Rachael Beesley has faithfully followed these. This is a real treat for Britten lovers.

Michael Morton-Evans, 2MBS-FM Fine Music
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Interview with Jacqueline Porter on 3MBS-FM Daybreak

Hear soprano soloist Jacqueline Porter chat with 3MBS-FM’s Adrian McEnery and Michael Leighton-Jones about our concert in the Peninsula Summer Music Festival and our recent album ‘Illuminate.’

Adrian McEnery and Michael Leighton-Jones, 3MBS-FM radio

Listen here (click on 13 Dec and scroll to 2:32:20)

CD Review: The Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra, 'Illuminate'

The Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra has rapidly been making a prominent and excellent name for itself with superb performances of chamber music and as a full orchestra, conducted by Rachael Beesley from the violin. This recording showcases the orchestra with strings only and in a new and intriguing light expanding their repertoire into the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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They put these techniques into stunning play in ‘Illuminate’, with the result being an album of fresh creativity and deep emotional colour…a recording of great beauty, with all elements tightly controlled whilst allowing the artistry of the whole to speak. I believe this will quickly become a favourite recording for those that take the time to listen to it and explore the rhetorical interplay and ideas.

Peter Hagen, ClassikON
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