Recognizing the centenary of the Anglo-Irish composer Charles Villiers Stanford's death, this new album from The Sixteen includes a number of premiere recordings of his Irish Folksongs and Partsongs.

Stanford is celebrated both nationally and internationally as a composer of great diversity. He composed a substantial number of concert works, including seven symphonies, but he is best-remembered for his choral works. Stanford's writing for voices is exquisite and his imaginative storytelling is ever-present in his Irish Folksongs where he captures everything from fiery revenge to passionate love with equal effectiveness.

Stanford's dedication to the poetry of Mary Elizabeth Coleridge also stands out-he was drawn to the lyricism of her poetry and the imagery she conjures up-something that is clearly heard in his Opus 127 settings. Much of her poetry is marked by a sense of loss and change, nowhere better portrayed than in The Guest with its unsettling narrative.

Recorded live at The Sixteen's Handel in Oxford Festival, 2006, Elin Manahan Thomas gives a performance of captivating communication and sparkling intelligence in these stunning and contrasting Handel Cantatas, bringing to life the world of four women, all of whom have been betrayed by love and its deceitful charms.

The Sixteen adds to its stunning Handel collection with a new recording of Dixit Dominus set alongside a little know treasure - Agostino Steffani’s Stabat Mater. Full of virtuosity, vibrant colour and dynamic energy, Handel’s Dixit Dominus captures absolutely the Italian style of the period. Handel’s control of forces is masterly and the range of texture and style is breathtaking. Written during the composer’s time in Italy in the early eighteenth century it is amongst his first autographed works and also one of his finest. By comparison Agostino Steffani’s little known Stabat Mater was one of his last compositions. Written for the Academy of Vocal Music in London, this work is the most powerful expression of Steffani’s religious fervour and, outside opera, his largest, most varied and most heartfelt composition.

Includes work(s) by various composers.

This recording draws together some truly great choral pieces - Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms through to Barber's Agnus Dei, the moving choral setting of his ever-popular Adagio for Strings. Here the most prominent new world composers of the time, Ives and Barber, are brought together with old world counterparts, Poulenc and Stravinsky, in a disc of deeply felt music expressing each composers' perception of the spirituality of life. Straddling the two worlds is Michael Tippett's set of spiritual settings from "A Child of Our Time".

Frank Martin was arguably Switzerland’s greatest composer.  His shimmering Mass for Double Choir, completed in 1926 as ‘an affair between God and himself’, is one of the finest settings of the 20th century, yet it had to wait forty-one years to be shared with others in its first performance. This collection of his choral music also includes his cantata for Switzerland’s National Day and the Ode to Music, along with some charming part-songs. Eclectic and technically superb these pieces display a style that is serenely individual.

Without doubt, Monteverdi was the greatest of the early baroque composers. He revolutionized the music of the theatre and the church with his dramatic and imaginative use of voices and instruments and with his daring harmonies and rhythms. Next to his Vespers of 1610, the Selva morale e spirituale of 1641 is his most significant and virtuosic collection of sacred music. This collection is to celebrate Monteverdi's 450th anniversary and includes all three previous volumes of The Sixteen's celebrated recordings of the anthology. "These are some of the most spirited and individual performances of this repertory available." (BBC Music Magazine) "There are subtleties and shades in the overall ensemble's interactions, but there is no shortage of splendour unleashed in the magnificent passages of the virtuosic eight-part Dixit Dominus." (Gramophone) "The longest work on the disc, a superbly varied seven-part Gloria accompanied by two violins as well as continuo." (The Guardian) "There is a sense of deep familiarity with the music in this recording, a feeling of easiness with Monteverdi's harmonic and, especially, rhythmic vocabulary that lends a tripping lightness to the performances..." (International Record Review)

This disc combines some of Henry Purcell's most powerful masterpieces. Love's Goddess Sure Was Blind, an exuberant tribute to the young Queen Mary, and some of his most eloquent compositions, written for her funeral. Love's Goddess Sure was Blind, written in exuberant and florid style for the birthday of the much loved young Queen Mary ends, extraordinarily, with a reflection on the grief her eventual death would provoke. It was less than six years later that the prophesied mourning became a reality, when, in her early thirties, she succumbed to smallpox. Purcell's eloquent compositions for her funeral are acknowledged as some of his most powerful masterpieces marrying a genuine of expression of grief (Purcell greatly admired the witty, musical Mary) with a characteristic sophistication of style.

António Teixeira's extraordinary and grandly structured setting of the Te Deum was written for a New Year's Eve performance in 1734 in the Italian Church of his home city, Lisbon. Calling for eight soloists, five spaced choirs and a large orchestra, this lavish and ornate piece bubbles and sparkles through the text with an easy zest and breezy charm that is distinctively Portuguese, giving us a rare insight into musical life in Lisbon before the devastating earthquake of 1755.

Renowned for their Handel interpretations, Harry Christophers and his award-winning ensemble, The Sixteen, add to their glittering catalogue of Handel discs with this new recording of Jephtha. The last oratorio that he wrote, Jephtha is also often seen as his most profound; the portrayal of Jephtha's suffering is particularly noteworthy for its astonishing sincerity. The Sixteen are joined by a stellar case of soloists including James Gilchrist, Susan Bickley, Sophie Bevan, Robin Blaze and Matthew Brook.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

2011 sees the first recording by The Sixteen devoted entirely to Palestrina. The disc marks the start of a new project which will result in a series of new recordings exploring a selection of the composer's vast output, and a Choral Pilgrimage tour. Palestrina was born in 1525 not far from Rome, in the town whose name he bore and from which we take the cover images for this new series of discs. Possibly the greatest composer of liturgical music of all time, Palestrina was a towering figure in Renaissance polyphony. Choral singers world-wide will know his Missa Papae Marcelli (recorded by The Sixteen on COR16014) as, without doubt, it is the most renowned of Palestrina's works and possibly the most famous mass of all time. On this new disc The Sixteen has recorded some of the sumptuous music he wrote for the Assumption including his Missa Assumpta est Maria and Salve Regina. Without doubt, Palestrina was the great master of all Papal composers and his spiritual craft and harmonic vitality fulfilled the needs of the Vatican. His motets for the Assumption also entitled Assumpta est Maria, are glorious examples of such work and can be heard in all their splendour on this recording. By his death in 1594, Palestrina had published a huge amount of music including over 100 Masses and over 350 motets.

Despite the mystic beauty of his music, John Tavener's place in Western music is a controversial one. His desire to create musical ikons for a time in which he believes 'man has lost his belief not only in God, but also in himself' is provocative. Yet part of the attraction of his music must surely arise from its symbolic nature, a reflection of his deeply-held Orthodox faith. This collection covers a wide range of Tavener's celebrated choral output and includes his immediately popular setting of William Blake's The Lamb, and the luminously spiritual, Ikon of Light.

Recorded ‘as live’ in October 2006 following its performance at The Sixteen’s opening concert as Associate Artists of Southbank Centre, Brahms’ German Requiem one of the great choral masterpieces of all time. Brahms himself made a piano transcription of the orchestral parts of his magnificent Requiem. The arrangement for two players allows a degree of intimacy, precision and contrapuntal clarity that cannot be achieved in the orchestral version; indeed, at times one is reminded of the Liebeslieder-Walzer op. 52. In 1871 this version was given its English première conducted by Brahms’s friend Julius Stockhausen.  It is appropriate therefore that the piano used on this recording is a Bösendorfer of 1872 thus allowing us to experience the sort of sound Brahms himself would have heard.

Bach was Leipzig’s Director Musices between 1723 and 1729, as well as being Cantor of St. Thomas’s School involving providing music for the four principal churches and also any other special sacred or secular occasion. During these years Bach supplied at least three complete annual cycles of Cantatas for the church year. The rich variety of his writing for solo voices and orchestra along with thrilling choral textures is well represented in these three cantatas.