Gozo’s Gaulitanus Choir held a concert tour in Vienna between December 9-14 last year, marking the choir’s 20th venture abroad.

Led by its musical director Colin Attard, who deemed the tour a “success”, the choir performed in venues across Vienna to sizeable audiences.

“This success was also the result of the close collaboration with Vienna’s TU Orchestra as well as the full cooperation of Vienna’s Persephone Choir”, says Attard.

“Both the TU Orchestra and the Persephone Choir not only coordinated Gaulitanus’s full programme of artistic events but also participated in most of them.”

The Gaulitanus Choir was involved in four different artistic engagements during the tour, opening with a lunchtime concert at Vienna’s St Stephen’s cathedral.

The whole repertoire during the tour consisted of Maltese music by Giuseppe Caruana, Carmelo Pace and Attard himself.

Two Advent concerts featuring Gaulitanus, the Persephone Choir and the TU Orchestra followed – who jointly performed a varied repertoire, including from the German-Austrian tradition and Maltese numbers as well as other international excerpts.

The first was at St Peter’s church, which is the second most important church in Vienna centre, and the other at Mary, Queen of Martyrs church, the Rudolfsheim Catholic church in Vienna 15th district.

The whole repertoire during the tour consisted of Maltese music

During both concerts, conducted by the Persephone’s musical director David Salazar and the Gaulitanus’s Attard, choir member Pierre Louis Attard was also the guest solo violinist with the TU Orchestra during an orchestral slot.

“Both concerts were very favourably received, with the Malta-related works scoring an enthusiastic response,” says Attard. 

A welcoming prelude to the Rudolfsheim concert, organised in collaboration with the cultural association Kulturkreis 15 within the framework of the Rudolfsheimer Advent, was given by the Breitenfurter Weisenbläser (a traditional Austrian horn ensemble) coming from the southern part of Vienna.  

The Gaulitanus’s final commitment was at the historic campus of Vienna’s Technical University, specifically at the Kuppersaal.

The choir was the special guest during the TU Orchestra’s grand symphonic concert, opening the proceedings with a number of Maltese a cappella compositions in Maltese by Caruana, Pace and Charles Camilleri.

The TU Orchestra invited the choir to open its grand symphonic concert, during which Gaulitanus presented Sibelius’s Violin Concerto in D Minor and Bruckner’s Symphony No 4 in E-flat Major.