“In Paradisum” Reviews, 30 May 2026
© Chalice Paiva
Reviews
Limelight
In Paradisum (Sydney Chamber Choir)
Shamistha de Soysa| 5 stars | 1 June 2026
“Sydney Chamber Choir’s In Paradisum presents 10 choral pieces by predominantly 20th century composers from Estonia, Norway, Sweden and Australia.
Singing in several Nordic languages, English and Latin, the 26 singers conducted by Artistic Director Sam Allchurch perform unaccompanied, with cellist Julian Smiles joining the ensemble for two works by Joseph Twist and Knut Nystedt. …
…
The exceptional pieces brought together here exemplify skilled and adventurous writing which continues to develop choral techniques and which the choir sings with excellent musicianship and masterful skill, both individually and as an ensemble. Conventional rhythms and harmonies are challenged, new sounds are proffered, but the effect is always beautiful and the word painting is vivid.
…
Grieg’s Ave maris stella, Knut Nystedt’s Stabat Mater and Arvo Pärt’s Bogoroditse Djevo are three Marian themed pieces placed throughout the program. Ave maris stella is an appealing cameo reflecting Grieg’s accomplishments as a writer for choir and voice. Its mood of tranquillity and deft key changes are ably achieved.
Nystedt’s Stabat Mater … with cellist Smiles is the climax of the evening. A searing piece for choir and cello, narrating the suffering of Mary as she stands at the foot of the cross, it is powerful and unsettling. Alternating with passages of sheer lyricism and lucent harmonies, it takes us out of our comfort zone as Smiles and the ensemble present a compelling account of the dissonant chords, niggling chromatics and rhythms and keys that seek a home. The cello is a central part of the texture with its large leaps of register, shivering tremolos, jabbing double stops and demanding central cadenza, ending in a final march into paradise.
Bogoroditse Djevo, a Slavic hymn to the Virgin is a beautifully articulated, lightly tripping multimetric shout for joy, accented by rhythm and vivid shading. …
Veljo Tormis wrote seven songs in his song cycle Autumn Landscapes. The choir presents us with three, On hilissuvi (It is late summer) Üle taeva jooksevad pilved (Clouds are racing) and Kanarbik (Heather). The songs are brief, but eloquent. Cluster chords, triplet rhythms and shifting harmonies glide over anchoring pedal points, finely coloured and controlled by the ensemble, singing of late summer and racing clouds, adding an incandescent shimmer to the flaming lines of Heather.
The Greatest of These by Anne Cawrse sets an adaptation of the familiar biblical text from 1 Corinthians. We have the pleasure of hearing some of the choristers as soloists. It is deceptively simple to hear, beautiful in its caressing simplicity but demands solid musical skills.
Biblical texts from the Old Testament’s Song of Songs are the inspiration for Four Songs of Love (Let him kiss me, Until the daybreak, Awake, O north wind and His left hand) by Sven-David Sandström, sung as a pleasing continuous bracket. His inventive style, described as post-modern, plays with rhythms, voices and concepts of tonality, creating a rich, almost instrumental choral soundscape, performed with finely balanced voice parts.
Joseph Twist’s heartrending Lament for Cello and Choir opens with a silken, sobbing soliloquy from Smiles, growing into an interplay between voices and instrument. At times the arpeggiated cello underpins the choral textures, and at others, the cello draws back to let the voices emerge from the tapestry.
…
Two short pieces, Galina Grigorjeva’s In Paradisum and Urmas Sisask’s Benedictio, a fiesta of syncopation complete the line-up.
Allchurch’s varied positioning of the singers achieves appealing spatial effects in the overall blend and highlights the various vocal lines and soloists. Robust programme notes offer words, translations and insights. With In Paradisum, Sydney Chamber Choir takes choral performance to a new level, exploring bold writing and innovative techniques, rewriting the old and bringing divine new repertoire to the Sydney stage.”
classikON
In Paradisum: Sydney Chamber Choir shines in earthly and heavenly light
Pepe Newton | 31 May 2026
“… the program only fully revealed itself in performance as, rather than offering paradise as a single heavenly destination, it unfolded as a whole series of paradises glimpsed along the way: in a landscape, in autumn light, in love, in desire, in unbearable grief, in the choir of angels and finally in the sheer joy of benediction.
Sam Allchurch directed a performance that used St James’ Church with real intelligence. At times the singers were placed close to the audience in two rows, men behind women, creating a direct and immediate connection. At other times they moved into the choir stalls beneath the glowing mosaic chancel dome, where the sound gathered inward before spilling out into the church. It created a different sound entirely: more intimate, almost as if the choir were singing to each other and we were being allowed to listen in. All the physical movements were intentional and well considered, completely changing the way the music landed in the audience and allowing a few seconds of, sometimes necessary, contemplation between works.
…
Anne Cawrse’s The Greatest of These, commissioned for Sydney Chamber Choir’s 50th anniversary, gave the concert its first great meditation on love. … Toby Wong’s tenor solo was beautifully poised, Kristen Butchatsky’s soprano solo rose cleanly above the texture, and the solo quartet of Wei Jiang, Liane Papantoniou, Alison Lockhart and Naomi Crellin moved seamlessly from within the choir. …
Sven-David Sandström’s Four Songs of Love brought a very different kind of love into the church. Drawn from the Song of Songs, these texts may sit in the Bible, but let’s be honest: this is quite erotic writing. … By the final “His left hand shall be under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me”, the choir seemed to be inside the sound they had created, some with eyes closed, drawing the final chord into a perfectly tuned super-charged yet almost inaudible hum.
Joseph Twist’s Lament for Cello and Choir stopped me in my tracks. After a few lines of solo cello, the choir’s entry was so unexpected and heartbreaking it seemed to evolve out of the instrument itself, voices emerging seamlessly from Julian Smiles’ sound. This was a slow lament with a rolling midsection, ending in what felt like the sound of angels crying, the sopranos floating above the grief. Smiles’ bow was like watching silk move over the strings, while his plucking and strumming had a harp-like delicacy. Oh my word, this brought a tear. Beautiful writing in every sense.
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Then came Knut Nystedt’s Stabat Mater, and for me this was the heart of the concert.
…
The choir was splendid, Smiles was extraordinary. His cello was not an accompaniment; it was part of the choir, carrying the grief, tension and ascent of the work. It wept. It caressed. The plucked notes were like drops of blood onto dirt. As the work drove upwards, the bowing became faster, more urgent, almost furious, until the final bell-like “Amens” gave us a glimpse of heaven. But it came at a cost. Even in the glory, sorrow remained.
How do you follow that?
Cleverly, with Galina Grigorjeva. After the anguish of the Stabat Mater, In Paradisum felt like the soul’s arrival: lighter, clearer and beautifully placed in the arc of the program. At “Chorus angelorum”, the choir of angels, the sound opened into something radiant and Russian Orthodox in colour, setting the hairs on my arms on end.
The final work, Urmas Sisask’s Benedictio, brought the release. … Based around Gregorian chant, this is sacred music, yes, but not the floating, reverent kind. It rocks along with ecstatic outbursts and rhythmic drive – plus a slightly funky oddness that made it a wonderfully fun finish. There were smiles across the choir, and you could feel them loving it.
Sydney Chamber Choir are sounding wonderful as ever, with familiar voices and newer additions coming together in a sound that rings out as confident and cohesive. St James’ gave them a beautiful acoustic, but they also knew how to use it. Bravo to Sam Allchurch, Julian Smiles and every singer for a deeply moving concert. Above and beyond excellent.”
What’s On Sydney
In Paradisum: A World-Class Chamber Choir Carrying Fifty Years of Fire
Faith Jessell
“Sydney Chamber Choir marked its 50th anniversary last year, and their history hums beneath every note – not as weight but as momentum – shaping them into one of Australia’s most fearless and finely tuned vocal groups. Under Sam Allchurch, they honour that legacy while sounding startlingly fresh: curious, bold and completely alive to the emotional pulse of now. Their latest program, In Paradisum, traced a luminous path through ancient chant, Nordic stillness and new Australian voices.
I arrived straight from the Saturday afternoon chaos – buskers, wind, shoppers, the usual city restlessness and stepped into the cool marble hush of St James’ Church. The gold-lit dome, the old wooden pews, the towering organ pipes. … Sydney Chamber Choir knows exactly how to use this space: the dignity, the air, the acoustics that let their sound rise, settle and hum.
In Paradisum unfolded like a slow, luminous journey through light, loss and renewal. The programming and pacing were beautifully judged, each work opening naturally into the next and deepening the emotional terrain, weaving ancient and contemporary voices into a single, coherent arc. It is almost impossible to single out highlights in something shaped with such care, but here is what resonated most personally for me.
I was delighted to see Anne Cawrse’s The Greatest of These on the program again. The 1 Corinthians 13 text – widely known from weddings and its “love is patient, love is kind” refrain – is so familiar it risks becoming ornamental, but Cawrse’s composition makes it feel newly illuminated. … each line landed with intention, the choir giving the words a pure, unsentimental honesty.
Joseph Twist’s Lament brought a different emotional charge. With his background in film and television, including a little show called Bluey, Twist has an instinct for atmosphere – for shaping sound in a way that feels cinematic without overwhelming the choral line. Guest artist Julian Smiles’ superb cello wove through the voices, creating a rolling, almost epic soundscape that still felt unmistakably choral.
Arvo Pärt’s Bogoroditse Dyevo offered a moment of stillness that seemed to hold the room in place. Then came the earthy, grounded world of Tormis’ Autumn Landscapes, music rooted in land and memory. The jolt arrived with Nystedt’s Stabat Mater: the voices did not just blend; they collided, cascaded and surged. The dissonance hit like a cold front – sharp and deliberate – with Smiles’ cello threading through the turbulence. Grigorjeva’s In Paradisum held the room in suspension, its chanting hypnotic, its textures shifting in ways that felt both surprising and inevitable, while Sisask’s Benedictio followed like a bright release, joyful and weightless – the perfect Amen.
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Sydney Chamber Choir remains one of Australia’s world-class vocal ensembles – precise, imaginative and emotionally fearless. Their sound is both disciplined and daring, rooted in decades of excellence yet always reaching toward what choral music can still become.
Somewhere in the middle of the program, I realised the entire audience had softened. Shoulders dropped. Breaths deepened. The room itself seemed to loosen. The choir’s pacing invited that shift – a trust in suspension, in the purity of sound held just long enough to let meaning settle. Breathe in. Breathe out. Reset. That is what Sydney Chamber Choir does so well: they do not just perform; they create an atmosphere where people can feel connected, restored and held. When the final note dissolved into silence, it felt almost sacred.
Stepping back into the city, I carried a calm I hadn’t expected. In Paradisum was not just a choral recital, it was a moment of sanctuary – a reminder of how profoundly music can restore the spirit when it is made with intention, high artistry and heart. You do not need to know the repertoire. You do not need to understand choral technique. Just walk in, sit down and let the sound find you. In a world full of noise and hurry, this is a rare gift.”
Artists
Sam Allchurch
Conductor
Sydney Chamber Choir
Julian Smiles
Cello
Program
Anne Cawrse
The Greatest of These
Edvard Grieg
Ave Maris Stella
Galina Grigorjeva
In Paradisum
Knut Nystedt
Stabat Mater
Arvo Pärt
Bogoroditse Djevo
Jan Sandström
Det är en ros utsprungen
(Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming)
Sven-David Sandström
Four Songs of Love
Urmas Sisask
Benedictio
Veljo Tormis
Autumn Landscapes (Movements 1, 3 and 7)