The Sixteen's Blog

Handel rehearsal in Wellington

Wellington Town Hall was the scene of Thursday’s Handel concert on our Asia-Pacific tour: you can see Harry rehearsing the choir and orchestra in ‘Dixit Dominus’.  Tonight is the last concert on the tour: the choir perform the Immortal Legacy programme in the same venue.  Details are here.  The concert is being recorded by Radio New Zealand. You can hear the same station’s review of the Handel concert here, at about 6:12 – they loved it (especially the sopranos!).

I gather it is pretty stormy on the North Island, with major power-cuts; I hope tonight’s concert is not affected.

The China office has reached Chengdu, where I have just received the following despatch from David Clegg in Wellington (photos to follow):

‘Greetings from Wellington. We’re about to do our last Handel concert of the tour in the beautiful Town Hall. If the children at our workshop today are anything to go by then we should have a very enthusiastic audience. Simon Berridge led Kirsty Hopkins, Tim Jones and myself in a fun morning’s work with two local schools where we took them through some Tallis, Bruckner and Tavener. They were delightful to work with, and very responsive. A real credit to their teachers. As the tour comes to a close we are beginning to look back on the last week and a half, and take stock of a most brilliant tour. I think it has inspired the ever-youthful Harry to look for future opportunities in these fascinating parts of the world. For me it has been a real opportunity to revisit countries I last came to 20 years ago with The National Youth Choir of Great Britain. I’ve met up with old friends in both Sydney and Melbourne and loved seeing how the places have developed over the years. The orchestra fly home tomorrow while the choir have a well-deserved day off. Weather not so great today, so we’re hoping for some sun tomorrow (although my sunburn from Sydney has only just begun to die down, much to the amusement of my colleagues). We’re all booked in for a meal at a recommended restaurant tomorrow night for copious amounts of New Zealand lamb. But first, tonight’s concert….’

The choir has moved on to Melbourne; the orchestra has a day off in Sydney; I am still in Hong Kong for another day of meetings; and our offices and colleagues in London and Oxford are helping keep the show on the road.

Tonight’s concert is at the Melbourne Recital Centre at 7.30, with a programme including Allegri’s Miserere and works by Palestrina, Anerio and Marenzio.

The South China Morning Posts arts critics are notorious for finding fault with nearly every event they review (apparently even the Concertgebouw Orchestra got short shrift recently), so maybe today’s review of our Messiah last Saturday isn’t so bad, although it starts with the usual (and here rather tedious, as well as inaccurate) numerological debate: ‘Directed by Harry Christophers, The Sixteen Choir seems a misnomer: on Saturday it was sporting 18 singers on stage, 16 in the programme notes and around 30 on the posters.

Christophers was once one of  the 18  boy choristers at Britain’s Canterbury Cathedral, traditionally known as The Sixteen in deference to ancient statutes. If the point seems laboured, it at least offers a frame for asking whether size matter’s in Handel’s Messiah, which has a greater role for the chorus than his other oratorios.

The work’s unsinkable popularity was confirmed in this highly enjoyable Arts Festival performance, by turns zingy and introspective, and sporting every colour bar grey. Christophers kept the action moving slickly, regularly tweaking details in the instrumental ensemble’s rock-solid support. The chorus delivered faultlessly from a technical standpoint but often sounded once-removed from the emotions, not simply by being small in number but also by being consciously restrained by Christophers in volume and edge.

The four soloists commanded an impressive narrative flair, sometimes captivating more by a sense of theatricality, however, than the quality of voice that Handel puts so roundly to the test.  The exception was countertenor Robin Blaze, whose beguiling shifts in tone and responsiveness to textual shading were exemplary throughout. You would have to go a long way before hearing a more telling performance of ‘He was despised’.

Tenor James Gilchrist led the pack in terms of projection; bass Matthew Brook hooked us with dramatic presence; soprano Gillian Keith trod a middle path. And did the local audience oblige tradition by rising for the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus? Yes, in a bemused, Mexican wave sort of way.’

Emily's first photo from Sydney

Harry at the Naxos CORO CD sales desk in Hong Kong

John and Harry checking CORO stock in Hong Kong

Emily’s first photo from Sydney is just in, so The Sixteen has arrived in Sydney! Handel’s Dixit Dominus in the concert hall at the Opera House tomorrow (27 February).

Plenty of good vibes in Hong Kong from the two concerts here, and a major push for our label CORO had the desired effect: significant sales at both concerts. Before the audience arrived, Harry found time to visit the sales desk manned by the team from Naxos, our distributors in Asia.

Having stayed on in Hong Kong, I was pleased to be able to go to the Hong Kong Sinfonietta’s concert this afternoon, as a guest of my friend the CEO, Margaret Yang: Ravel and Sibelius, including the latter’s violin concerto given by the impressive young Japanese violinist Sayaka Shoji.

For readers in the UK, the Best of British Music at the Proms programme on BBC TV is still available on the iPlayer: lots of Handel from The Sixteen.