Netherlands Radio Choir

The more than sixty-strong Netherlands Radio Choir is the only professional concert choir of this scale in the Netherlands. After its formation in 1945 it quickly proved itself an indispensable factor in large-scale choral-symphonic repertoire in our country, performing operas, oratorios and cantatas in the Netherlands Public Broadcasting series (AVROTROS Friday Concerts, NTR Saturday Matinee and the Concertgebouw's Sunday Morning Concerts). The choir also presents a cappella concerts in Amsterdam (Concertgebouw) and Utrecht (TivoliVredenburg and Jacobikerk). Almost all concerts are broadcast live on NPO Radio 4 – no other Dutch choir reaches such an extensive audience.

Prominent on the repertoire of the Netherlands Radio Choir are operas and choral works of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, many of which were commissioned from composers such as Manneke, Roukens, Zuidam, Momotenko-Levitsky, MacMillan, Whitacre, Adams and Glanert, but also classic twentieth-century works by Boulez, Stockhausen, Kagel, Ligeti, Messiaen and others. The Great Scratch Concert has now become an annual tradition: following intensive workshops, some 1200 amateur singers gather to perform major works such as Verdi’s Requiem with the Netherlands Radio Choir and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra directed by Martin Wright, who was chief conductor from 1993-2002.

In 2015 Klaas Stok was appointed choir leader, and Peter Dijkstra became senior principal guest conductor in 2018; Michael Gläser has been principal guest conductor since 2010.

The Netherlands Radio Choir performs frequently with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

In 2017 the Netherlands Radio Choir – together with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra – was awarded the Concertgebouw Prize.