Croatia visits Scarborough

On Canada’s birthday the Danube-Swabian Club (Donauschwaben Klub) welcomed very special guests.

The Brevis Vocal Ensemble in front of the Danube Swabian Club Toronto

 The Brevis Vocal Ensemble - consisting of about 20 young artists between the ages of 15 to 21 – presented the audience with a large variety of wonderful melodies sung in four languages: English, German, Croation and Latin.

The comparatively "young" choir comes from Osijec in Croatia and has already travelled the world. Just before arriving in Toronto they performed in Montreal. Among the many countries they have visited are- closer to home- Bosnia, Herzegovina, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Sweden. But they traveled as far away as China – where they were honoured with a Gold Medal for their efforts.

The choir including director and pianist

The repertoire of this vocal assembly is very wide and includes Croatian and works from many choir composers of the baroque masters as well as modern composers. The choir nourishes sacred and secular music with the same passion.

This ensemble is in great demand for concerts all over Croatia and beyond and has performed with the Croatian Philharmonic Orchestra, Symphonic Orchestra of Croatian Television and others. They have also appeared in numerous broadcasts on television and radio. Since the choir’s founding in 1995 they have won quite a number of prestigious awards, gold and silver plaques and first prizes in national contests in Sweden and Hungary. Last year they brought home a gold medal from the 4^th World Choir Games in Xiamen (China) in the category of youth choirs of equal voices.

The enraptured audience on Sunday night had an opportunity to verify that this lovely bunch if youngsters, with those marvellous voices, deserved every one of these accolades.

Canada Day might not have been the best day to choose for a concert, but that is the way it worked out. Many of the club’s members and other people simply flee the city on this weekend or partake in all sorts of other celebrations. Thus only a little over 100 guests made it to this special performance. A bit more advance notice would have been better and might have made a big difference, but the decision for the performance was only confirmed very recently. Those of us, who did make it, enjoyed every minute of it and can only say Bravo!

As always

Dick Altermann