Edinburghmusicreview 19/10/2026: The Choral Pilgrimage
..., the Sixteen has been performing at a phenomenally high level since 1979, and it is enormously to the credit of its founder and conductor, Harry Christophers, that it has maintained such a standard of excellence through multiple generations of singers. He has maintained a balance of new and more mature singers throughout, and this contributes to the magical sound that they produce, blending clear and thrilling soprano tones with sonorous basses, along with vivid altos and rich tenors in the middle. There is a core of 25 singers who featured on the tour with 17 or 18 singing in each concert - we had The Seventeen today!...
These two initial motets set the scene for a concert of wonderful 16th century polyphony, and the
Sixteen rose to the challenge of this complicated music with aplomb and style. ....
This excellent concert ended with James MacMillan’s ‘Nothing in Vain’, a 2021 commission which explores both the composer’s religious belief and his Scottish musical origins. Fine solo contributions came from the splendid Katy Hill again, and Mark Dobell (tenor) and Ben Davies (baritone), excellent both. This extended piece was a worthy climax to the concert, .....
The last word goes to Harry Christophers, whose vision, charisma and great musicianship has sustained the Sixteen for nearly 50 years, a period of continuing excellence which I salute. Brian Bannatyne-Scott – Review in full
Nick-Holmes-music 30/09/2026: The Sixteen bring peace and stillness to the opening concert of the Bridgewater Hall’s 30th International Concert Series
Taverner Gaude plurimum (Rejoice exceedingly) - ...The choir spun the work’s polyphonic vocal lines beautifully to create a compelling, complex whole, like the intricate fan vault ceiling of the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, which was also created in the 16th century. All sections of the choir shone equally, as the Hall’s superb acoustics elicited all the detail of the individual lines while adding a gorgeous bloom to the sound.
... Pärt’s piece was built on much simpler material than Tavener’s, with the voices joining in simple patterns rather than complex polyphony. The choir performed it superbly, as did the other Pärt pieces in the concert, including the Magnificat, with its limpid textures and monumental feel, as if carved out of rock....
Taverner O splendor gloriae (O glorious light) - ... The choir’s performance was beautifully balanced, more subdued than in the previous Taverner piece, with simpler architecture, voices subtly dancing, ending on a lovely, melismatic ‘Amen.’... Nick Holmes – Review in full
Ritmo 10/2026 – Lead, Kindly Light
Las interpretaciones no decepcionarán a los numerosos y acérrimos seguidores de The Sixteen, quienes con su perfección sonora y con su expresividad desbordante, una de las principales virtudes de Christophers, sitúan la presente grabación en una adquisición obligada para todos los amantes de este fantástico repertorio. Simón Andueza
Translation -… The performances will not disappoint the numerous and devoted fans of The Sixteen, whose sonic perfection and boundless expressiveness – one of Christophers’s greatest strengths – make this recording an essential purchase for all lovers of this fantastic repertoire. Simón Andueza - Review in full
Gramophone April 2026: CD Lead, Kindly Light
...The Sixteen under Harry Christophers exhibit their customary perfect intonation, blend and diction, combining sonority with detail in the spacious acoustic of All Hallows, Gospel Oak. Malcolm Riley – Review in full
Ritmo January 2024 – Palestrina, Missa Ut re mi fa sol la, etc - *****
… dando como resultado una misa de una belleza apabullante, belleza que aun reluce mas con la limpia y expresiva interpretacion de The Sixteen. En tiempos en los que cada vez se graba menos polifonia, perseverar en la obra de uno de los grandes maestros del Renacimiento interpretandolo a cappella, de manera que la perfeccion sin excepciones de su contrapunto quede expuesto sin veladuras, como un cuadro recien restaurado, es de una valentia admirable. Mercedes Garcia Molina
Limelight-Arts 6/11/2023 : Editor's Choice - December 2023 - Sirens’ Song - The Sixteen blows the dust off the Victorian partsong tradition.
…Arthur Sullivan’s The Long Day Closes, the recording’s epilogue, sets the high-water mark: a sumptuous, bittersweet ballad, no emotion left unwallowed. But Christophers keeps a tight hold on his forces; this is an exercise in understated luxe, letting a stately tempo and the group’s pillowy blend do all the work until the last phrase finally unbends into the subtlest of hairpins.
… The Blue Bird is, of course, the headliner – an evanescent musical moment captured beautifully here in a heat-haze of lower voices, unison sopranos denying us the sharply etched silhouette of a soloist, but giving the composer’s soaring bird a softer-edged, pastel outline….
.…it’s Finzi’s Seven Poems of Robert Bridges where we finally feel the choir start to stretch their legs, given (for the first time) substantial musical ground to cover. Each song is carefully delineated – the joyful intake of breath that is My spirit sang all day, the blossomy sweetness and simplicity of I praise the tender flower, the ravishing lyricism of Nightingales – but there’s also a real sense of arc through a cycle that gets as idiomatic and persuasive an account here as it has ever had. Alexandra Coghlan – Review in full
Gramophone October 2023 : CD Siren’s Song
One would have to travel very far to find an album of British a cappella (mostly) music as beautifully sung as this. …. The Sixteen’s singing, like Mike Hatch’s recording, is as excellent as one would expect. This is truly an album to transport one to another place, though perhaps not in Stanford’s clattery Train! Highly recommended. Guy Rickards – Review in full
Classical Music.com 5/09/2023: CD Sirens’ Song
The Sixteen’s beautiful performance is an ideal way of getting to know them. Immaculate vocal blend and intelligent phrasing are a given when The Sixteen sing, and make their ‘Blue Bird’ one of the most mellifluously attractive on record. But it’s the way the technically difficult corners – the staccato accents in ‘The Witch’ and the abrupt rhythmic hairpins in ‘The Train’, for instance – are executed, combining minimal fuss with maximum exactitude, which truly sets their interpretations apart as exceptional.
Imogen Holst’s ‘Welcome Joy’ and ‘Welcome Sorrow’ -… A set of six partsongs to Keats’s poetry, its delectable combination of harp and women’s voices is vibrantly captured by The Sixteen’s soprano and alto sections. ...
The spurting accelerandos in Finzi’s ‘I have loved flowers that fade’ are superbly timed and implemented, … …, Sullivan’s ‘The Long Day Closes’ is the most impressive – the choir’s eloquence bringing this outstanding album to a moving conclusion. Terry Blain – Review in full
Gramophone September 2023 : Palestrina - Masses Vol 9
… After a somewhat tentative Kyrie, both Palestrina and these singers find new energy in the Gloria, which is full of joyful homophonic textures with a strong rhythmic profile. Harry Christophers has an affinity for upper-voice sections, and there is a lovely example in the Credo starting on ‘Crucifixus etiam pro nobis’.
Further on there are many thoughtful and nuanced moments … … the finest moments are in the motets from the Song of Songs, which seem to catch Palestrina at his most sensuous. Those falling phrases in ‘Descendi in hortum meum’, for instance, are ravishing. Edward Breen – Review in full
Bachtrack 21/06/2023 : Heavenly sounds from The Sixteen with Harry Christophers in Dublin
…Right from the start of Byrd’s psalm, I was struck by the luminous sound of the voices, each crafted into a mellifluous whole by Christophers. The sonorous depths of Philip van Wilder’s O doux regard and the smooth, concentrated phrases of Byrd’s Ne irascaris, Domine were impressively executed, while the wisp of sound on “inquitatis” (sinfulness) was feather-soft. This sense of desolation increased in the Civitas sancti tui, something Christophers elicited in the plaintiff repetitions of “desolata” (forsaken) highlighting the composer’s sense of anguish at the fate of Catholicism in England at the time. The ending was beautifully hushed.
Philippe de Monte’s O suavitas et dulcedo and Byrd’s Vigilate -… These were expertly handled by The Sixteen, …Andrew Larkin – Review in full
The Guardian 20/04/2023 : The Sixteen: Choral Pilgrimage review – Byrd celebration hits the heights *****
Byrd’s genius is perennial, but the particular interest in the programme that conductor Harry Christophers has so meticulously put together is the interlinking of works by Dutch and Flemish composers who specifically influenced Byrd, as well as two new pieces commissioned from Dobrinka Tabakova in memorial tribute. … Standing just forward of Hereford Cathedral’s corona, the Sixteen’s always immaculate delivery seemed to take on a gilded quality here, bringing a glow to the less familiar works by Philip van Wilder, Philippe de Monte and Jacobus Clemens non Papa. Rian Evans - Article
Classical-music 18/04/2023 : CD A Watchful Gaze
…Christophers’s juxtapositions are always rewarding, and The Sixteen is on ravishing form. There’s an unmannered generosity to the singing whose wide-eyed freshness enables Christophers to keep the counterpoint buoyant and uncongested, all the time sensitive to unobtrusively registering key words in the texts. De Monte’s enveloping eight-part O suavitas et dulcedo, exquisitely poised, is the perfect foil to the desolation of Civitas Sancti tui, the incarnation of Byrd’s recusant grief – its lower voice repetition of ‘Sion deserta facta est’ as sumptuous as it is heartfelt. And concluding with a performance of the Vigilate whose contrapuntal density is kept well-oxygenated, A Watchful Gaze is a quadricentennial tribute beautifully judged and exquisitely executed. Paul Riley – Review in full
Crescendo-Magazine 12/04/2023 : Intégrale du Songbook de 1611 : le radieux chant du cygne de Byrd
…Eu égard à la qualité d’inspiration d’un tel corpus, ce recueil d’une heure et demie reste étrangement peu visité par la discographie, hormis quelques songs puisés dans des anthologies. On sait gré aux Sixteen d’Harry Christophers, rejoints par les archets de Fretwork, de nous en livrer un complet aperçu, abordé avec toute la finesse requise. Une interprétation fluide et subtilement colorée, … Christophe Steyne - Article
Crescendo-magazine 24/02/2023 : Réunion en un album des Messes brèves de Bach par The Sixteen- …L’interprétation des Sixteen privilégie le dépouillement et la simplicité, le recueillement et la clarté, mais aussi la transparence, et elle suscite une émotion que les sopranos Grace Davidson et Julia Doyle, les altos Robin Blaze et William Purefoy, les ténors Jeremy Budd et Mark Dobell et les basses Ben Davies et Eamonn Dougan entretiennent avec une certaine pudeur. … Les chœurs et les instrumentistes de Sixteen font preuve d’une belle cohésion, sous la baguette noblement attentive de Harry Christophers. Jean Lacroix - Article
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