1952 - 2000
In the Bach anniversary year 1950, Carl Mathieu Lange (28 January 1905 - 25 May 1992) took over the leadership of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin. Because Georg Schumann had a life-time appointment as director, Lange became his successor officially only in 1952. He saw his appointment as director as a calling to continue the performance of Bach's works, which however he wanted to renew in the spirit of a more modern and more transparent sound. Lange preferred the Italian Baroque and was the first to perform Monteverdi's Virgin Mary Vespers as well as masses by Allessandro Scarlatti and Antonio Caldera. He also performed a whole series of masses by Haydn. As far as the music of the nineteenth century is concerned, he took a particular interest in early works, bringing to light a mass by the 18-year-old Puccini and a Te Deum by the 20-year-old Bizet. Modernism was not entirely absent: Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms was performed, and on the occasion of the 175-year anniversary of the Sing-Akademie, Hans Werner Henze was commissioned to write his Musen Siziliens.
Hans Hilsdorf (16 March 1930 - 17 November 1999), the Sing-Akademie's director from 1973 to 1999, broadened its repertory in all directions, for example by performing Stabat Maters by Poulenc, Rossini, and Dvorak. Eastern Europe entered the repertoire with Kodály, The engagement with modernism (Bernd-Alois Zimmermann, Hans Gál, Nikolai Badinski, Helge Joerns and others) led in 1983 to a performance of the highly complex cantata Das Augenlicht by Anton Webern, a work rarely attempted by non-professional choirs. Hans Hilsdorf, under whose directorship the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin celebrated its 200th anniversary in 1991, did however not forget the choir's traditions, performing the mass by Fasch and works by other composers, and presenting himself as a composer. But he also made the choir available to other conductors and had the Sing-Akademie participate in events that went far beyond its original approach of devoting itself to 'sacred music'. During Berlin's 750th anniversary, the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin appeared in a performance of the opera Zar und Zimmermann by Albert Lortzing at the Siegessäule - Lortzing himself had participated in the Sing-Akademie.