The Sixteen: the sound of sweet 16
Read an interview with Harry Christophers, featured in The Daily Telegraph. Click here for the article
Concerts
The Scotsman - Edinburgh Festival Bach at Greyfriars
The Sixteen were cut in half for their appearance in the Bach at Greyfriars series on Thursday evening. Presenting two of Bach's cantatas dating from the time he spent in Leipzig, eight singers and a period instrument ensemble directed by founder Harry Christophers gave a consistently ravishing performance
in both BWV9, Es ist das Heil uns kommen her and BWV 146, Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal in das Reich Gottes eingehen.
Salvation in the first arrived shot through with light and joy. Vocal lines overflowed into one another with Christophers's brisk tempi giving plenty of pulsating movement to the cantata's spirit of faith and hope. In contrasting texture, instrumental accompaniment was delicate and crisp. Christophers' direction lost not one bit of the music's complexities while always placing the beauty of Bach's music at its heart.
Soloists slotted seamlessly into his interpretation, but especially memorable was Ruth Massey's alto aria in BWV146. With violin, cello and organ, its shapely phrasing was illuminated from within by warm persuasiveness and a desire to reach heaven that no God could refuse.
The Guardian - Edinburgh Festival The Fairy Queen
Though purists insist that Purcell's score for The Fairy Queen can only really be appreciated when it's heard in the context of the adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream for which it was conceived, the music alone still makes a satisfying enough concert package. The Edinburgh Festival performance – a nod towards this year's 350th anniversary of Purcell's birth – came from Harry Christophers and The Sixteen, who introduced just enough entrances, exits and dramatic byplay to give a frisson of theatricality to these charming masques.
It was a pleasant if slightly low-key performance, though vocally and instrumentally it was first rate. Christophers ensured that the instrumental numbers had a good sinewy energy, and all of the soloists made the most of his or her party pieces. The bass Jonathan Best and counter-tenor Iestyn Davies camped up the dialogue of Coridon and Mopsa to the manner born, while James Gilchrist brought wonderful polish and verbal clarity to all the tenor numbers.
The Independent - BBC Prom 36 Handel Coronation Anthems
Since the Queen of Sheba normally enters like a bulldozer, The Sixteen’s approach to this hackneyed moment from ‘Solomon’ came as a lovely surprise: so dainty was their sound, so nimble their oboes, that for once one could see what a perfectly crafted piece this is.
Under their director Harry Christophers, they went on to serve up the ideal Handel celebration, with four of his coronation anthems (plus an organ concerto) interspersed with fireworks from Baroque music’s prima diva assoluta, the soprano Carolyn Sampson. The arias she delivered from Semele concluded with that classic piece of coquetry, ‘Myself I Shall Adore’. For this, Christophers handed her a mirror, to which she proceeded to sing: this was one of those moments when the stalwarts in the arena get an infinitely better deal than the people in the expensive seats above. Sampson’s rippling coloratura frolicked with the orchestra in a teasing comedy turn which was at the same time an exquisite piece of singing.
Click here for the full review
The Guardian - BBC Prom 36 Handel Coronation Anthems
In a programme centred around the four coronation anthems, the choir sang with the same combination of talent and unbridled joy that has earned them worldwide fame.
Christophers's approach to the anthems was lively but unsensationalist, relying on the accuracy of his singers and players rather than the sort of bombast that might formerly have been used to convey the sense of might and majesty we once expected of our royalty. A change of pace came with excerpts from the "baudy" semi-opera Semele, the sensuous early Salve Regina and the fourth organ concerto. Carolyn Sampson, who sung Semele at the Coliseum in 2004, proved once again matchless in the role: she summoned an astonishing variety of tone for the three arias...
Equally astonishing was Alastair Ross, gracing the concerto's ebullient phrases with a remarkable intimacy.
Click here for the full review
The Evening Standard - BBC Prom 36 Handel Coronation Anthems
This anthem (My heart is inditing) for the coronation of the queen is for the most part more intimate and Christophers drew expressively flowing lines from his excellent choir.
At the 1727 coronation, The King shall Rejoice came to grief in some way, according to a note jotted on his order of service by no less an authority than the Archbishop of Canterbury, No chance of that here: everything was done in great style.
Click here for full review
The Catholic Herald - The Choral Pilgrimage 2009
The Sixteen are such a technically acccomplished bunch, they could sing in a wigwam and get away with it. Birthday years apart, these composers (Purcell & MacMillan) make a fascinating pair. Their musical materials and cultures are dissimilar. But their vividly imagined vocal writing, harmonic boldness, and measured balance between florid decoration and immediacy in response to text, are comparable. And the package here - Purcell favourites like his settings of the Prayer Book funeral sentences interlaced with some of MacMillan's Communion motets and his masterly O bone Jesu - was almost indecently pleasurable.
With MacMillan's consoling response to infant death, A Child's Prayer, as (for me) the evening's highlight, it was the kind of pleasure that leaves you wondering how the government has missed a trick and failed to tax it. Give them time.
The Times - The Choral Pilgrimage 2009
Age doth not weary them: indeed, with all these multiple celebrations, the Sixteen and Harry Christophers are on buoyant form. Their Purcell and MacMillan programme, called Bright Orb of Harmony and already available on disc, is sombre Lenten entertainment, but it lifts the
heart rather than oppressing the spirit. This is partly because Purcell's music is so minutely - and still startlingly - attuned to the words of pain and penitence it expresses. And partly because Christophers has moulded the voices of his singers so sensitively to the innermost inflections of the language.
The voices of Grace Davidson and Charlotte Mobbs were like flute and clarinet duetting in the Italianate plangency of O dive custos, an elegy on the early death of Queen Mary. Her Funeral Sentences concluded the evening, contrastingly spare and wide-spaced in their dark and delectable dissonances. Thou knowest, Lord was performed in its stark, voice-tracking first setting, and its more familiar warm harmonies revealed in an encore.
And MacMillan? His motet O bone Jesu, originally commissioned by the Sixteen, radiated the first half with its high, haloed cries of "Jesu", and, with its tremulous ornaments and keening voices, seeming like a Celtic tribute to Purcell himself.
Purcellian melismas charge the quiet energy of Sedebit Dominus Rex, one of MacMillan's continuing cycle of Strathclyde Motets. And Mitte manum tuum weaves high female voices over a male-voice dirge: the Sixteen's performance had a laid-back intensity that went to the very heart of Christ's words to doubting Thomas. The motets framed MacMillan's Dunblane memorial, A Child's Prayer, its murmured mantra resonating long into the evening.
The Times - Samson
The evening sped by as one set piece followed another, with the recitatives in between accompanied by the supersensitive and imaginative playing of the Orchestra of the Sixteen, conducted by Harry Christophers. Harp and theorbo plucked in sympathy with the solemn tread, meditative calm and anxious breathing of each character.
There was one very special moment, when the leader, the violinist Walter Reiter, stood up to accompany Keith in Dalila's With plaintive notes and am'rous moan. But even this didn't win back the heart of Samson - and he went on to tear down the Philistine temple, and kill himself in the process. Hence the noble Dead March, played exquisitely on coppery antique horns, flutes and pulsing timpani. And some beautifully focused choral mourning from 18 of the Sixteen...
Click here to read about our special thirtieth anniversary season launch and our plans for the 2008/9 season, from an article in November's Musical Opinion
The Daily Telegraph - Choral Pilgrimage 2008
Harry Christophers, director of the chamber choir The Sixteen, wants to do more than just ravish our ears. He wants to set us feeling and thinking, and every detail of this wonderful concert was carefully planned for maximum expressive effect...the shock of all that glorious vocal euphony just takes your breath away
The Herald - 'Ikon'
The Sixteen's performance at the Perth Festival came - as it always does - as a fresh shock to the system, one of those magical moments...
their singing is warm, expressive and human, with Christophers' supreme direction - a joy to observe...one of the great choral concerts of our time
The Times - 'Ikon'
After 28 years in the business, the Sixteen remain a superb choir
The Guardian - Choral Pilgrimage 2007
'...it's a fair bet that the Pope's 16th-century choristers never sounded as polished as this...a vibrant performance.
****
The Daily Telegraph - Choral Pilgrimage 2007
...The Sixteen, under Harry Christophers, has developed its own mellifluous, disciplined manner, manicured and highly polished
The Guardian - 'Streams of Tears'
...the choral sounds were wonderfully clear and unfailingly precise...Christophers' group can be just as impressively extrovert as they had been austerely restrained
The Times - 'Streams of Tears'
Here was exultant and agile singing
The Independent - Brahms' German Requiem
Brahms' Requiem was a triumph...it was as if Christophers had lifted a mighty layer of dust from an Old Master...a masterly stroke
The Independent
...what recherché treasures they had unearthed from the archives...Tallis' Puer natus est took the breath away with its bold harmonic audacity...5 STARS
The Daily Telegraph
Jesus autem transiens by Robert Wylkynson and William Cornysh's setting of the Salve regina served to exemplify the richness and variety that Renaissance music can yield, and The Sixteen, directed by Harry Christophers, were ardent exponents of it
The Times
a thrilling dramatic choral tour de force . . . . . . invigorating
The Independent
The Sixteen scintillated with Handel’s Dixit Dominus.
The Guardian
...the precision of The Sixteen, with the instrumental accompaniment woven artfully through the voices, was beguiling
Handel in Oxford 2006
The Oxford Magazine, November 2006 Peter Schofield
Alexander's Feast, 16th September 2006
It was awe-inspiring to hear this music in the Sheldonian Theatre...and to wonder how close the glorious sound produced under Christophers' direction resembled how it sounded in 1738. The singing of the eighteen singers of The Sixteen was immaculate with every word audible, every note responsive to their sense.
