Hot on the heels of their landmark appearance on BBC Four’s Sacred Music programme Harry Christophers and his award-winning ensemble The Sixteen are releasing a brand new recording of Handel’s Messiah. On this disc The Sixteen and Harry Christophers are joined by four soloists, all revered Handelians who have had a long association with the choir - Carolyn Sampson, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Mark Padmore and Christopher Purves. Indeed, Carolyn, Mark and Christopher all sung as members of the choir before embarking on successful solo careers.
The Sixteen has performed Messiah over 150 times and over the years the two have become synonymous with one another. Arguably the most famous oratorio ever written and certainly Handel’s best known work, Messiah needs little introduction. Composed in a staggering 24 days, Messiah was first performed in Dublin in 1742 where it received a rapturous welcome.
Harry Christophers first conducted Messiah in 1985 and has been celebrated by audience and critics alike for his gripping and inventive interpretations ever since. Over the years ‘The Sixteen’s Messiah’ has become almost legendary with audiences flocking to performances year after year and, of course, Harry’s interpretation of this great masterpiece has changed and developed.
This exceptional new recording demonstrates an accomplished expertise, honed over the past 23 years.

Emmanuelle Haim follows her 2006 recording of Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda with an unusual and inventive programme on the theme of the Lamento, the literary and dramatic form that found its seventeenth-century musical archetype in Monteverdi’s celebrated Lamento d’Arianna.
Emmanuelle Haim has taken great care in choosing 9 soloists to perform these demanding works amongst which Véronique Gens sings the Lamento d’Arianna, the tantalising fragment from Monteverdi’s lost opera of 1608; Natalie Dessay is the abandoned nymph in the very different Lamento della ninfa from the Eighth Book of Madrigals. Alongside these familiar works by Monteverdi the programme includes Philippe Jaroussky in Barbara Strozzi’s dramatic monologue L’Eraclito amoroso, probably written for Strozzi herself, Carissimi’s Lamento di Maria Stuarda (with Patrizia Ciofi) and Strozzi’s teacher Cavalli’s Lamento d’Egisto (with Rolando Villazón, who also sings Orfeo’s Lamento). Joyce DiDonato, recently signed to EMI/Virgin Classics as an exclusive artist, adds Ottavia’s heartrending farewell to Rome from Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea

Mozart Requiem: Realisations is an exploration of the history and influence of Mozart’s famous Requiem. It begins with a full recording of the Requiem in the popular completion by Mozart’s pupil and amanuensis, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, followed by full movements completed by other composers including Michael Finnissy and Duncan Druce.
The second disc presents a 68-minute audio documentary on the musical roots of the Requiem written by the renowned Mozart scholar Cliff Eisen, featuring musical examples from the requiem and the works from which it draws inspiration, highlighting striking similarities between Mozart’s work and that of several contemporaries and predecessors.
The Choir, conducted by its Director of Music, Stephen Cleobury, is joined for the recording by the Academy of Ancient Music playing period instruments. The soloists are Elin Manahan Thomas, Christine Rice and former King’s College choral scholars, James Gilchrist and Christopher Purves.

This new performance of one of the most emblematic music works ever composed is the debut recording of Insula Orchestra, a new formation (on period instruments) co-founded in 2012 by Laurence Equilbey. Along with an impressive range of soloists (Sandrine Piau, Sara Mingardo, Werner Güra and Christopher Purves) and Accentus, the leading European choir also founded by Laurence Equilbey twenty years ago, they offer an intense and stylish performance of Mozart’s Requiem. Composed in his final year and unfinished, the work is still today shrouded in mystery.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner, music director of English National Opera and an exclusive Chandos artist, presents Volume 2 of their Polish Music series; a disc dedicated to vocal works by Witold Lutosławski. They are joined by the soloists Lucy Crowe, Toby Spence, and Christopher Purves in looking at some of the composer’s earlier works for voice and orchestra as well as three major works written after 1960: Paroles tissées, Les Espaces du sommeil and Chantefleurs et Chantefables.
Among the earlier pieces, Lacrimosa is the only surviving fragment of an intended Requiem and the only sacred work in Lutosławski’s output. In complete contrast, the Silesian Triptych was written at the height of the post-war Soviet doctrine that called for music that connected with the broad masses. In this folk-based work, Lutosławski takes three Silesian songs about the trials of love, giving them sparkle as well as depth to lift them above the mundanity of everyday life. Both works here feature the soprano soloist Lucy Crowe.
When Poland finally emerged from the cultural oppression of the post-war decade, its music scene flourished.
For Lutosławski, it was a time for personal development. In the first half of the 1960s his music had a raw energy, but by 1965 it had developed a much more subtle tone. Paroles tissées, in which the tenor soloist here is Toby Spence, simply accompanied by strings, harp, and piano, was the first work really to show this new subtlety in his works. Les Espaces du sommeil, with the baritone soloist Christopher Purves, is another prime example of the new lyrical quality that came to colour many of Lutosławski’s later orchestral works.
Chantefleurs et Chantefables is made up of nine charming and humourous songs which, inspired by the collection of childrens’ poems by the surrealist Robert Desnos, explores the vivid imagery and bright colours of the natural world through the innocent eyes of a child.