Choral concerts coming up in Canberra include an Australian premiere

Behold the Sea! On the Beach. By Christopher Gordon. "A Sea Symphony." By Ralph Vaughan Williams. The National Capital Orchestra, soloists and Canberra Choral Society. Conducted by Leonard Weiss. Chorus master Dan Walker. Llewellyn Hall, Saturday April 13 at 7.30pm. premier.ticketek.com.au 

An Australian premiere and a work by a Canberra composer are among the pieces in two upcoming Canberra concerts, both for choir and orchestra.

Leonard Weiss, who will conduct both concerts, says the Canberra Sinfonia, which he co-founded last year, was formed as an early classical ensemble - it began playing works by composers such as Haydn and Mozart.

Now it is taking on two contemporary works, Adam's Lament (2009) by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt and Last Verses (2015, revised 2018) by Canberra composer Dan Walker.

"It's far more challenging," Weiss says of playing contemporary music.

Adam's Lament is "not in the standard mould of a mass or a Gloria", Weiss says, but is set to a text by the Eastern Orthodox monk Silouan of Athos.

"It looks at how the fall of Adam represents humanity."

The work will be sung in Estonian by Luminescence Chamber Choir and the English translation will be provided in the program.

Canberran Dan Walker's Last Verses has been revised by the composer since its premiere in 2016.

"He filled out the orchestration and the choral are a bit more extensive than they were," Weiss says.

The work takes the last poems of five writers and sets them to music: Thomas Hardy's He Never Expected Much; Ralph Waldo Emerson's Terminus; D.H. Lawrence's Shadow; Robert Herrick's The White Island; and Elinor Wylie's Feathers Torn From Living Birds.

"It's similar to the Pärt in a way - they both deal with death."

While there's a seriousness to the music, not inappropriate given the subject matter, Weiss says the work is not unrelievedly slow and gloomy.

"Shadow and Feathers are quite ponderous but The White Island becomes quite undulating ... It's very at sea in a calm way."

The National Capital Orchestra concert features the Australian premiere of Christopher Gordon's score for the Australian-filmed TV adaptation of Neville Shute's novel On the Beach. One movement is for choir and orchestra.

"Christopher's score is much more popular overseas than it is here," Weiss says.

Given the subject matter is the imminent demise of a group of people in Melbourne awaiting deadly radiation from the northern hemisphere, Weiss says the score is "surprisingly not gloomy", with "light, I wouldn't say cheerful" passages.

"The third movement, the Lachrymosa, is a little bit more sombre."

Also on the program is Ralph Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony (1903-09). It was the composer's first symphony (of nine) and was set to poetry from American writer Walt Whitman's collection Leaves of Grass.

Unlike the Gordon work the choir is featured heavily through the symphony, which lasts more than an hour.

"It's truly an epic," Weiss says.

"He didn't know he was capable of creating such power."

The concert features two soloists: soprano Chloe Lankshear (The Song Company) and baritone David Greco (Opera Australia principal artist).