The Sixteen put on a sweet show

It was a good idea to have Harry Christophers and his excellent choir The Sixteen back again for this year’s Perth Festival of the Arts.

It did, though, seem a little odd that it was filmed in St John’s – not our St John’s Kirk, but St John The Evangelist in Norwood, London.

As all so far of this festival’s Stagecast streamings have been, it was excellent in quality of picture, sound and camera technique.

The Sixteen had programmed a wide range of styles: back to Tudor catches, Victorian church music, more recent and bang up to date.

They began with the rousing Naylor Vox Dicentis confident and resplendent, sure of its way in fugue and with a ringing soprano line.

Next the first of three interspersed, almost bawdy Tudor songs, but delivered in a best Sunday Suit manner – I am a Jolly Foster, Hoyda Jolly Rutterkin and finally Giles Jolt.

Modern was finely presented with MacMillan’s Children are a heritage of the Lord, set in his more recent, less abrasive manner and a magical arrangement by Bob Chilcott of A

Londonderry Air.

Later came Eric Whitacre’s contemporary classic Sleep and, a première, Roderick Williams sensitive, rippling, rise and fall arrangement of the Eriskay Love Lilt.

Other Victorians were Pinsuti’s Good Night, Good Night Beloved, sung with fine sentiment but not sentimental, the truly beautiful Stanford The Blue Bird, Pearsall’s Lay a Garland, a lament on the sad passing of a false love, deeply felt and finally Gustav Holst’s Nunc dimittis rising to a stirring climax.