The Swedish Radio Choir is a professional choir. It is part of Sveriges Radio, the public radio broadcasting company of Sweden. The choir consists of 32 singers and their chorus master Marc Korovitch. Peter Dijkstra is the choir's most recent chief conductor. He left the position after eleven years, in 2018. Since 1979 the Swedish Radio Choir has been based at the Swedish Radio Concert Hall, Berwaldhallen, in Stockholm.
In 2010 the Swedish Radio Choir was included in Gramophone magazine's special feature article where an international jury was asked to name the world's leading choirs. [1]
The War Requiem, Op. 66, is a large-scale setting of the Requiem composed by Benjamin Britten mostly in 1961 and completed in January 1962. The War Requiem was performed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. The traditional Latin texts are interspersed, in telling juxtaposition, with extra-liturgical poems by Wilfred Owen, written during World War I.
His Master's Voice (HMV) is a famous trademark in the recording industry and was the unofficial name of a major British record label. The phrase was coined in the 1890s as the title of a painting of a terrier mix dog named Nipper, listening to a wind-up disc gramophone. In the original painting, the dog was listening to a cylinder phonograph. In the 1970s, the statue of the dog and gramophone, His Master's Voice, were cloaked in bronze and was awarded by the record company (EMI) to artists or music producers or composers as a music award and often only after selling more than 100,000 recordings.
The Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance has been awarded since 1961. There have been several minor changes to the name of the award over this time:
The Gramophone Classical Music Awards, launched in 1977, are one of the most significant honours bestowed on recordings in the classical record industry. They are often viewed as equivalent to or surpassing the American Grammy award, and referred to as the Oscars for classical music. They are widely regarded as the most influential and prestigious classical music awards in the world. According to Matthew Owen, national sales manager for Harmonia Mundi USA, "ultimately it is the classical award, especially worldwide."
Great Mass in C minor, K. 427/417a, is the common name of the musical setting of the mass by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and considered one of his greatest works. He composed it in Vienna in 1782 and 1783 after his marriage when he moved to Vienna from Salzburg. This large-scale work, a missa solemnis, is scored for two soprano soloists, a tenor and a bass, double chorus and large orchestra. It remained unfinished, missing large portions of the Credo and the complete Agnus Dei.
The BBC Symphony Chorus is a British amateur chorus based in London. It is the dedicated chorus for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, though it performs with other national and international orchestras.
The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (DSO) is a German broadcast orchestra based in Berlin. The orchestra performs its concerts principally in the Philharmonie Berlin. The orchestra is administratively based at the Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) Fernsehzentrum in Berlin.
Simon Halsey, CBE is an English choral conductor. He is the Chorus Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus, a position he has held since 1983, and has been Chorus Director of the London Symphony Chorus since 2012. He is also artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic Youth Choral Programme and the director of the BBC Proms Youth Choir, and Conductor Laureate of the Berlin Radio Choir. He is Professor and Director of Choral Activities at the University of Birmingham.
The BBC Singers are a British chamber choir, and the professional chamber choir of the BBC.
John Alldis was an English chorus-master and conductor.
Ragnar Bohlin is a Swedish conductor born in 1965.
Peter Phillips is a British choral conductor and musicologist. He was the founder of The Tallis Scholars in 1973 and of Gimell Records in 1980.
The London Philharmonic Choir (LPC) is one of the leading independent British choirs in the United Kingdom based in London. The Patron is Princess Alexandra, The Hon Lady Ogilvy and Sir Mark Elder is President. The choir, comprising more than 200 members, holds charitable status and is governed by a committee of 6 elected directors. As a charity, its aims are to promote, improve, develop and maintain education in the appreciation of the art and science of music by the presentation of public concerts.
Stabat Mater is a work by Gioachino Rossini based on the traditional structure of the Stabat Mater sequence for chorus and soloists. Initially he used his own librettos and compositions for a portion of the work and, eventually, the remainder by Giovanni Tadolini, who composed six additional movements. Rossini presented the completed work to Varela as his own. It was composed late in his career after retiring from the composition of opera. He began the work in 1831 but did not complete it until 1841.
John James Fryatt was an English actor and opera singer best known for his performance in comic character roles.
The Netherlands Chamber Choir is a full-time and independent professional Dutch choir. It was founded in 1937 by a nl:Felix de Nobel as the Chorus Pro Musica to perform Bach cantatas for the Dutch radio.
Kenneth Alwyn is an English conductor, composer and writer. Described by BBC Radio 3 as "one of the great British musical directors", Alwyn is known for his many recordings, including with the London Symphony Orchestra on Decca’s first stereophonic recording of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. He is also known for his long association with BBC Radio 2's orchestral live music programme Friday Night is Music Night, appearing for thirty years as a conductor and presenter, and for his contribution to British musical theatre as a prolific musical director in the 1950s and 1960s. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and is married to the actress Mary Law. The first volume of his memoirs A Baton in the Ballet and Other Places was published in 2015. The second volume Is Anyone Watching? was published in 2017.
Peter Dijkstra is a Dutch conductor, especially of choirs and vocal ensembles.
Wilke te Brummelstroete is a Dutch mezzo-soprano. She has recorded Bach cantatas with John Eliot Gardiner and appeared as the valkyrie Siegrune in Wagner's Die Walküre at the Bayreuth Festival.
Brighton Festival Chorus is a large choir of over 150 amateur singers based in Brighton, UK. One of the country's leading symphony choruses.., and considered "one of the jewels in the city's musical crown", BFC performs in major concert halls throughout Britain and Europe, particularly in Brighton and London.