Highlights of Previous Seasons

The historic Ottawa Choral Society performs repertoire spanning six centuries from the music of Palestrina and Tallis through to Harry Somers and Christos Hatzis.  Each season has introduced new challenges that have stretched the choir’s technical and interpretive horizons.  From the exuberance of Haydn and Zelenka, the four B’s of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Berlioz, to Bernstein’s syncopated rhythms, Copland’s angularity and Britten and Debussy’s modern impressionism, the choir has become adept at moving effortlessly across genres and periods.  Matthew Larkin’s inspired interpretations of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium were just two among many of the highlights of his tenure with the choir, which also saw the choir singing Stravinsky’s monumental Symphony of Psalms in Twentieth Century Icons, a programme of music by the avant garde masters of the 20th century.

In Epic and Antic, the choir joined forces with the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra for Prokofiev’s epic cantata, Alexander Nevsky and Harry Somers’s virtuosic Three Limericks.  As a member choir of the National Art Centre Orchestra’s composite chorus, the choir has performed under the baton of major international conductors in large-scale works that include the Missa Solemnis, Elijah, and the Mozart and Verdi Requiems.  And in June, 2010, the OCS performed Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, the “Symphony of a Thousand”, in a joint performance with NACO and the Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal directed by the Quebec superstar conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin – a performance that will be remembered as a milestone in the choir’s 70-plus years of music-making.