Netherlands Chamber Choir

Felix de Nobel launched the ensemble under the name Pro Musica in 1937 specifically to deliver Bach cantatas across a sequence of radio broadcasts. One year later he renamed the group the Netherlands Chamber Choir. Its earliest membership included several Dutch vocalists who would soon achieve prominence, among them Theo Baylé, Corry Bijster, Greet Koeman, Roos Boelsma, Annie Hermes, and Guus Hoekman. Throughout the following ten years de Nobel worked to define a distinct character for the choir, which had acquired a reputation merely as a training ground for singers bound for opera stages. Shortly after the Second World War the Netherlands Transitional Radio Authority provided sponsorship, yet the ensemble soon asserted its independence. It then assembled an extensive a cappella library spanning music from the early medieval era to the present day and embarked on international tours that established its stature among leading ensembles. Numerous premieres took place under its auspices, encompassing compositions by Francis Poulenc, Frank Martin, Hendrik Andriessen, Henk Badings, Lex van Delden, and Rudolf Escher. In 1953 the Dutch government introduced an annual subsidy that secured the choir’s finances and enabled it to engage top-tier singers who could build their careers within the group. The ensuing decade brought repeated opera collaborations with Carlo Maria Giulini at the Holland Festival and on tour. As the singers grew older, reviewers criticized their inability to keep pace with younger groups that adopted historically informed approaches to early music. Felix de Nobel stepped down in 1972. Following a short interval of inactivity, the choir reappeared in the 1980s as a youthful body of twenty-six singers that operated without a permanent conductor, instead working with figures from the flourishing early-music scene such as Gustav Leonhardt, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Ton Koopman, Jos van Immerseel, Paul Van Nevel, Christopher Hogwood, Roger Norrington, Andrew Parrott, Peter Philips, and William Christie. Uwe Gronostay assumed the posts of chief conductor and artistic director in 1987, guiding performances of late-nineteenth-century repertoire that earned widespread praise. After Gronostay’s departure in 1997, Ivar Munk and Tõnu Kaljuste took over as artistic director and chief conductor respectively; under their leadership the choir broadened its contemporary offerings. Every season it presents its own a cappella series in ten Dutch cities and appears with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century. Stephen Layton became chief conductor in 2002. During the 1990s the ensemble featured on award-winning discs that included Vox Neerlandica I and Vox Neerlandica II, which survey the complete history of Dutch vocal music, as well as recordings devoted to choral music by Poulenc, Hindemith, and Janácek.