ISSEM 2026 | Choir - Lukáš Vendl

This year’s choral class repertoire will span the late Renaissance, the early Baroque, and the High Baroque. For the Friday concert in the church, we will prepare *O vos omnes*, a responsory by Carlo Gesualdo, together with two motets by the brothers Johann Michael and Johann Christoph Bach, close relatives of Johann Sebastian Bach.

For the concluding concert on Saturday, the choir will join the festival orchestra in a performance of selected choral movements from Handel’s *Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day*, HWV 76. The programme will thus offer the opportunity, within the course of a single week, to explore strikingly different expressions of vocal music—from the extraordinarily expressive a cappella masterpiece of the Italian Mannerist tradition, through seventeenth-century German sacred music with basso continuo accompaniment, to George Frideric Handel’s grand English oratorio scored for large orchestra.

Händel-Cecilia_-_12._As_from_the_Pow’r

J-M-Bach_Das_Blut_SATB

Händel_Cecilia_-_3._From_Harmony_SATB

Gesualdo_O_Vos_Omnes

J_C_Bach-Fürchte_dich_nicht