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Our summer concert will be taking place at 3pm on Sunday 28th May in St. Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin.  We will be presenting a multilingual musical journey through Europe visiting Ireland, England, Holland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Russia including choral and instrumental favourites by Johann Sebastian Bach, Anton Bruckner, William Byrd, Joseph Haydn, Heinrich Isaac, Thomas Morley, Orlando di Lasso, Henry Purcell, Igor Stravinsky and others.

The choir will be conducted by our musical director John Dexter and we will be joined by violin soloist David O’Doherty.  Join us for an uplifting and joyful celebration of the arrival of summer.

Admission is €15 at the door.

The choir is working hard in preparation for our upcoming performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in the Church of St. Thérèse, Mount Merrion, Dublin at 7pm on Sunday, February 26th.  We’re all looking forward to having a rare opportunity to sing this wonderful work to a large and appreciative audience.

During the performance, the audience will be invited to join in the singing of the melody line for five of the chorales, a practice which was common in Bach’s time.  You can see and hear us rehearsing one of these chorales at https://youtu.be/F0mLUoUCKzU – the text of the chorale is displayed on the video, so if you wish you can take the opportunity to get in some pre-concert practice by joining in the singing.

Tickets, priced €30 (€25 concessions), may be purchased online via this link.

 

After the choir’s highly successful return to the concert platform in December with our Christmas concert in the National Concert Hall in Dublin, we are delighted to be presenting a performance of JS Bach’s magnificent St. Matthew Passion at 7pm on Sunday evening February 26th, in the church of St. Thérèse, Mount Merrion, Co. Dublin.  This is a rare opportunity to hear a live performance in Ireland of one of the masterworks of European civilisation.

Tickets costing €30 (€25 concessions) may be obtained from choir members or purchased online at JS Bach – St Matthew Passion Tickets, Sun 26 Feb 2023 at 19:00 | Eventbrite.  For more details and information on the performers and location, go to the Events page on our website.

An intrepid group of Goethe Choir choristers braved the freezing conditions and came together for 2 hours to sing carols in Heuston Station, Dublin, on Sunday afternoon Dec 11, collecting money in aid of Focus Ireland.   Wrapped up warmly against the cold weather, we had a lot of fun entertaining the travellers, with the occasional assistance of a few passers-by, and were delighted to have collected the sum of €663.25 for the charity.

You can hear a sample of our singing, in this case the second verse (Oíche Chiúin) of our trilingual version of Silent Night, which the full choir had performed in the National Concert Hall in Dublin 3 days earlier, by going to https://youtu.be/sJgT5Bcs3ZM.

Many thanks to the 18 choristers who took part, to Cliona and Brigitte for organising the event, Werner for preparing the music, Geraint for leading the choir and/or playing the station piano and Cliona’s children and friends for shaking the collecting buckets.

The choir returned to the National Concert Hall in Dublin last Thursday evening, December 8th, for our traditional Christmas concert. after an absence of three years due to Covid19 restrictions.  The concert was especially enjoyable because of that, for performers and audience alike.

As well as taking part in a performance of the first part of JS Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and a cantata by Johann Kuhnau (Bach’s predecessor as director of music in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig), we sang a selection of European carols, including a beautiful carol from the Ukraine.  We were joined by the wonderful vocal soloists Ami Hewitt, Sharon Carty, Gavan Ring and Rory Dunne, and the virtuosic David Leigh on organ, all under the magnificent direction of our musical director John Dexter.

Go to the Gallery page on our website for some photos of the evening.

Unfortunately, due to the serious increase in Covid infection rates in Ireland and the government advice to reduce social interaction, we have decided to cancel our planned Christmas concert on December 6th 2021 in the National Concert Hall in Dublin.

In the light of medical and other advice we determined that it would be too risky for choir members to continue with rehearsals in preparation for the concert and that it would also be unsafe for choir members and audience members alike in the concert itself.  We have therefore very reluctantly decided that it would be in everyone’s best interests to cancel the concert this year.   The National Concert Hall has informed us that the cost of any tickets purchased from them will be refunded in full to the account from which the online purchase was made.

We’d like to apologise to all who were looking forward to hearing us singing, but hopefully we will be able to perform live again as soon as possible in 2022.