The Victoria Philharmonic Choir, conducted by Peter Butterfield, launches its season with a celebration of two masters of the baroque era -- George Frideric Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach.

Cantata No.140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (known in English as Sleepers Awake), is Bach's most famous and beloved cantata, whose starting point was a Lutheran hymn composed in 1599 by the pastor Philipp Nicolai. The biblical text relates the story of the wise and foolish maidens awaiting the arrival of their heavenly bridegroom.

The concert also features one of JS Bach's Lutheran Masses. For this Missa Brevis in A, Bach borrows liberally from his own earlier cantatas, but refines and deepens them into a brilliant short work that balances grand choruses with intimate arias.

Also on the program is GF Handel's triumphal Dettingen Te Deum. Handel, as "Composer of the Musick to the Chapel Royal," was commissioned to write a multi-part extravaganza to celebrate the victory of Britain, under King George II, over the French in the 1743 Battle of Dettingen. It features some delightful trumpet and oboe parts and a powerful fugue to close the work.