History
The first Australian InterVarsity Choral Festival took place in 1950 when the Sydney University Musical Society (SUMS) hosted the Melbourne University Choral Society (MUCS) for a week-long rehearsal camp culminating in a combined concert. Other university choirs joined over the years, with all State capitals (except Darwin in the Northern Territory) having at least one member choir by 1973. The IVCF has since become the largest regularly occurring choral festival in Australia.
From 1975 on, when the 26th IVCF performed Verdi's Requiem in the then recently opened Sydney Opera House, IVCFs have striven to perform large-scale works to high standards with professional orchestras where appropriate and available. The 37th IVCF (Brisbane, 1986) was the first to work with its state's peak professional orchestra, the then Queensland Symphony Orchestra, the major work on the program being Herbert Howells' Hymnus Paradisi. Two years later (1988), to celebrate Australia's bicentennial, the 39th IVCF collaborated with the Sydney Philharmonia and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Charles Dutoit to perform Mahler's Symphony number 8 ("Symphony of a Thousand"), again in the Sydney Opera House.
More recently, the 55th IVCF (Perth, 2004) took part in the Perth International Arts Festival to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Antonín Dvořák by performing his Stabat Mater with the Prague Chamber Orchestra under Australian conductor Graham Abbott.
Read more about this topic: Inter Varsity Choral Festival (Australia)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)