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Over its 100-year history the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Singers – Britain’s only full-time professional chamber choir – has performed a vast array of repertoire, in concert and over the airwaves, giving the premieres of countless works. Under Chief Conductor Sofi Jeannin, today’s virtuosic line-up revives some of these milestones. Song for Athene was written after John Tavener attended the funeral of Athene Hariades, the daughter of a family friend; the piece won a huge international audience when performed at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. Britten’s A Shepherd’s Carol is a setting of W. H. Auden, first heard in a 1944 ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ radio programme of new poetry written specially for Christmas Eve. Premiered in 2018, John Pickard’s Mass in Troubled Times interweaves words from the Latin Mass with texts from four other languages to piece together the story of a refugee father and daughter fleeing their war-torn country by sea.

Further works to be announced for this programme.

There will be no interval

Broadcast live on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3

Image: Sofi Jeannin © Chris Christodoulou