Macmillan's Stabat Mater

In this concert Brett Weymark showcases one of the most exquisite combinations in music: the sound of a virtuoso chamber choir with string orchestra.

And the program he’s chosen reflects the musical richness of the Christian liturgical tradition and the inspirational vision of faith.

Australian composers Matthew Orlovich, Daniel Brinsmead and Andrew Anderson offer fervent and heartfelt expressions of joy, hope and simple devotion. Arvo Pärt’s signature bell-like style is represented by two of his most popular instrumental meditations – Festina lente and Fratres.

But the heart of this concert is music by James MacMillan, whose sublime anthem “Who Shall Separate Us?” was heard in the funeral service for Elizabeth II. His setting of the Stabat Mater is a fiercely impassioned evocation of Mary’s grief at the foot of the cross, finding soaring moments of extraordinary beauty and consolation in the heart-breaking drama of this most sorrowful of Christian texts. The Stabat Mater might be a 13th-century litany but in MacMillan’s hands it becomes a deeply personal and devastatingly immediate account of a mother’s anguish.