Opening Concert at Grand Master's Palace Courtyard on Thursday October 29© 2009 MTA- Mario Galea

The Malta International Choir Festival of Sacred and Secular Music

The Malta International Choir Competition and Festival of Sacred and Secular Music organised by the Parliamentary Secretariat for Tourism, the Malta Tourism Authority, the Ministry for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport and INTERKULTUR Foundation (Germany) was held in between October 29th and November 1st. The festival was open to various categories and 17 choirs from overseas as well as 4 local choirs took part.

The festival kicked off on Thursday, October 29 with a Grand Parade, made up of some 600 choristers, who walked along Republic Street to reach the President’s Palace where the Opening Ceremony of the Festival took place.

The choirs performed on the following three days in various venues and in various categories. Most choirs participated in sacred and secular music competitions at St Publius Parish Church as well as the Catholic Institute, in Floriana.

Apart from the competitive aspect of the programme, the choirs performed to the public at St. John’s Square as well as in the Upper Barracca Garden, republic Square and St John’s co-Cathedral.

Two of the major public events were the Grand Concert at the Mediterranean Conference Centre on Friday, October 30 and an inter-religious service called ‘Singing Together for Peace’ held in St. John’s Co-Cathedral on Saturday, October 31.  The latter was presided by His Lordship Mgr. Mario Grech, Bishop of Gozo, and attended by representatives of different religious denominations, who read reflections and prayers for peace, accompanied by songs of peace from various Festival Choirs.

The Grand Concert featured selections from Mendelssohn’s oratorio “Paulus”, Haydn’s oratorio “The Creation” and Handel’s serenata “Acis and Galatea”. The Jubal orchestra accompanied the choirs under the direction of the artistic directors of the Festival, Mr Christian Ljunggren from Interkultur (Germany) and Rev. John Galea from Malta.  The “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s “Messiah”, sung by all Festival choirs together with the audience, provided a rousing conclusion to this event.

The festival programme ended on Sunday, November 1. During the morning, seven choirs visited and sang during mass in different parishes, where the parishioners attending the service enthusiastically received them. The closing ceremony was held at the Catholic Institute where participating choirs were presented with Trophies and certificates. The winning choirs regaled the audience with a selection from their repertoire.

Below are the results of the Choir Festival Competitions.

The winners in the Sacred Music categories were:

• Maulbronner Kammerchor (Germany)

• Stockholms Studentgarforbund (Sweden)

• VIVA Trondheim (Norway)

• Sola Fide (Norway)

In the Secular Music categories the winners were :

• Magnificat Youth Choir (Hungary)

• Maulbronner Kammerchor (Germany)