Page 42 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year
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Christophers was one of the pioneers of in-house recordings. After his label, Collins
Classics, folded in 1998, he created Coro, cannily buying most of his Collins recordings and
reissuing them under the Sixteen’s imprint.
His Wigmore Hall event this week, with Michael Pennington reading from Pepys’s diary,
focuses on music by Purcell’s older contemporaries: John Blow, Pelham Humfrey and
Captain Cooke. It is almost a breather before a hectic summer schedule. “It’s jam-packed,
and I have to have a life!”
The new MacMillan symphony will be heard, after Edinburgh, at the Barbican in October.
Christophers describes it as his most formidable challenge to date. “It’s a big symphony,
immense, a huge score with masses of percussion, piano and harps. John Studzinski said to
me, ‘I need an oratorio about the Holy Spirit, but there’s nothing.’ I’ve done a lot of
MacMillan, but mostly either a cappella or with a small string orchestra. This is something
else.”
The Choral Pilgrimage resumes at the Old Royal Naval College, London SE10, June 5;
Belshazzar, Grange Festival, June 20–July 6; James MacMillan’s Le Grand Inconnu, Usher
Hall, Edinburgh, August 17. An Enduring Voice is out now on Coro (COR16170)
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