Presented by Australian Boys Choral Institute

Sunday 29 March 2026 at 2:00pm - 4:30pm
St Andrew's Anglican Church | 228 New Street, Brighton VIC 3186

• Doors open at 1:45pm, concert starts at 2:00pm sharp. This performance will have one interval of 15 minutes. Latecomers will not be permitted until a suitable break in the performance.
• No photography or videographers permitted. Audience members should note this performance is being recorded.
• Both our Ballarat and Melbourne concert venues for these performances are fully accessible. While we encourage families to attend our concerts, this presentation is not suitable for very young children or infants.

In the second presentation of their triennial collaboration focussing on the Passion settings of J.S. Bach, the Australian Boys Choir and Genesis Baroque present the composer’s highly dramatic St. John narrative alongside a stellar line-up of guest soloists this March. 

Bach performed the St. John Passion on several occasions during his lifetime. While the work never achieved a definitive form, we take the composer’s unfinished revision of 1739 as a point of departure and broaden the orchestral palate further to include instrumentation from both the later version of 1749 and earlier versions presented in 1724, 1725 & 1732.

Providing a rich tapestry of baroque colours, we feature additional members of the string family (period lute, viola da gamba, the rare viola d’amore), the full gamut of oboes employed by Bach (including the mezzo-soprano oboe d'amore and contralto oboe da caccia) plus the sonorous foundation of a contrabassoon known to be included in 1749. 

Bach occasionally also altered voice types in music he composed for reasons of practicality or variety. As such, the brief contributions apportioned to the disciple Peter will be sung by a countertenor in these performances, rather than the more usual bass soloist.

Also very much in the spirit of Bach’s day is the inclusion of an additional aria, “Mein Tröster ist nicht mehr bei mir”, set to the very beautiful words of the composer’s librettist and regular collaborator Picander. This piece was known to be included in the now lost but reconstructable St. Mark Passion and is given in our version by the tenor Evangelist.

This event is generously supported by the John Henry Byrne Liturgical and Sacred Music Fund, and the Robert Salzer Foundation. We also gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Pinchgut Opera for their loan of a baroque contrabassoon after Eichentopf.