The BBC's Big Concert - BBC Singers - Live from London

BBC Singers at St Paul's Knightsbridge. Presented by Christopher Cook The BBC Singers have the largest and broadest repertoire of any professional choral group, and their programme at St Paul's shows their versatility, spanning four hundred years of the choral repertoire, beginning with William Byrd's Mass - one of the sacred masterpieces of the Tudor period, conducted by Chief Conductor David Hill. Then Principal Guest Conductor Bob Chilcott conducts three works composed by the Singers' Associate Composers over the last six years, plus a piece of his own - which requires audience participation! And to conclude the concert, David Hill directs three choral classics which were commissioned for and premiered by the BBC Singers in the 1940s. Tippett's The Weeping Babe and Britten's Shepherd's Carol are amongst the group's earliest commissions - composed for a programme called A Poet's Christmas which was broadcast in 1944. And Poulenc's monumental wartime cantata for unaccompanied voices, composed as a hymn to freedom in occupied France during the summer of 1943 was given its first performance a few months later by the BBC Singers in the Concert Hall of Broadcasting House. It is one of the most thrilling and powerful works in the entire choral repertoire. Byrd: Mass for five voices Gabriel Jackson: To Music* Judith Bingham: Water Lilies* Edward Cowie: Lyre-Bird Motet* Bob Chilcott - I am the song (with audience participation)* Britten: A Shepherd's Carol Tippett: The Weeping Babe Poulenc: Figure Humaine David Hill, conductor; Bob Chilcott, conductor* In the two intervals in the concert, there is a montage of reminiscences from the Singers' activities over nearly 90 years of their history, and a bird's-eye-view of the group's present-day outreach and learning initiatives - which include projects with children, young professional conductors and composers, and the amateur choral community at large.