Purcell was on the bill when Harry Christophers and The Sixteen made their debut in 1979. Their latest dive into the composer’s ravishing music prefaces his unfinished semi-opera The Indian Queen with the work’s elegant completion by his brother Daniel.
The Sixteen
Whether performing a simple medieval hymn or expressing the complex musical and emotional language of a contemporary choral composition, The Sixteen does so with qualities common to all great ensembles. Tonal warmth, rhythmic precision and immaculate intonation are clearly essential to the mix. But it is the courage and intensity with which The Sixteen makes music that speak above all to so many people.
Celebrating its 45th anniversary last year, The Sixteen gave its first concert in 1979 under the direction of Founder and Conductor Harry Christophers CBE. Their pioneering work since has made a profound impact on the performance of choral music and attracted a large new audience, not least as ‘The Voices of Classic FM’ and through BBC television’s Sacred Music series.
The voices and period-instrument players of The Sixteen are at home in over five centuries of music, a breadth reflected in their annual Choral Pilgrimage to Britain’s great cathedrals and sacred spaces, regular appearances at the world’s leading concert halls, and award-winning recordings for The Sixteen’s CORO and other labels.
Recent highlights include the world première of James MacMillan’s Stabat mater (at the Barbican in 2016 and live streamed from the Sistine Chapel in 2018), and his Fifth Symphony ‘Le grand inconnu’ (2019 Edinburgh International Festival and the Lincoln Centre, New York), both commissioned for Harry Christophers and The Sixteen by the Genesis Foundation, an ambitious ongoing series of Handel oratorios, extensive tours of the USA and The Netherlands, and a specially-commissioned series of programmes presented by Sir Simon Russell Beale entitled A Choral Odyssey.
About Harry Christophers
Harry Christophers stands among today’s great champions of choral music. In partnership with The Sixteen, he has set benchmark standards for the performance of everything from late medieval polyphony to important new works by contemporary composers.
Under his leadership, The Sixteen has established its hugely successful annual Choral Pilgrimage, created the Sacred Music series for BBC television, and developed an acclaimed period-instrument orchestra. Highlights of their recent work include an Artist Residency at Wigmore Hall, a large-scale tour of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, the world première of James MacMillan’s Fifth Symphony at the 2019 Edinburgh International Festival and a live-streamed performance of MacMillan’s Stabat mater from the Sistine Chapel. They have also undertaken extensive tours of the USA and The Netherlands, and will continue to tour the UK with their 2025 Choral Pilgrimage.
Harry Christophers served as Artistic Director of the Handel and Haydn Society from 2008 to 2022 and is now their Conductor Laureate. He has worked as guest conductor with, among others, the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the Deutsches Kammerphilharmonie. Christophers’ extensive commitment to opera has embraced productions for English National Opera and Lisbon Opera and work with the Granada, Buxton and Grange festivals.
In 2019, he collaborated with BBC Radio 3 presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch to produce a book entitled A New Heaven: Choral Conversations in celebration of the group’s 40th anniversary.
Harry Christophers was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s 2012 Birthday Honours list. He is an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, as well as the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and has Honorary Doctorates in Music from the Universities of Leicester, Northumbria, Canterbury Christ Church and Kent.