New Release For The Australian Chamber Choir on Move

The Australian Chamber Choir directed by Douglas Lawrence has a new album release Keys to Heaven on the Move label, which contains the first recording of the only surviving work written by Agata delle Pietà, an orphan of the Ospedale della Pietà where Antonio Vivaldi ran an elite music school.

Titled Ecce Nunc the manuscript for this cantata by Agata whose surname is not known, lay undiscovered in a Venetian library for nearly three centuries until discovered and reconstructed by harpsichordist and choral alto Elizabeth Anderson. Also on the recording are Allegri’s famous Miserere and Christus resurgens and other Italian masterworks, Palestrina’s Tu es Petrus and Missa Aeterna Christi munera.

Agata was born without the fingers on her left hand and abandoned to the Venetian orphanage Ospedale della Pietà. She would likely not have received any significant recognition for her compositions during her lifetime. Ironically, she has now been celebrated in Australia with the Australian Chamber Choir premiering her newly-discovered work in 2022. Agata can now add
to her list of achievements nine Australian performances, her first radio broadcast, her first commercial CD and her first home-town performance in almost 300 years.

The ACC presented the European premiere of the work in the Baroque splendour of Venice’s Palazzo Pisani as part of their European concert tour in July 2024.

The ACC was established by Douglas Lawrence AM in 2007. In its first twelve years, the choir undertook seven concert tours of Europe, recorded five CDs and presented over 200 concert performances, many of which were recorded for broadcast on Australian radio, ABC Classic FM or 3MBS FM. The choir has sung in some of Europe’s most prestigious concert venues including Notre Dame Paris, St Martin-in-the-Fields London, Thomaskirche Leipzig and the cathedrals of Berlin, Bonn, Freiberg, Freiburg and Lausanne amongst others. In Australia, the ACC has supplemented regular performances in key Victorian centres with interstate visits to perform in Canberra, Sydney, Albury, Bowral and Wagga Wagga.

Keys to Heaven is available on CD and all popular digital platforms.

Read our review of the ACC’s A Baroque Christmas album also on the Move label.