Six centuries of song: a great Scottish choir brings the English choral tradition to Château-d'Œx

On Thursday 4 June, the St Salvator's Chapel Choir of the University of St Andrews opens its 2026 Swiss tour at St Peter's Anglican Church in Château-d'Œx – and entry is free.

This is no ordinary student ensemble. St Andrews is Scotland's oldest university, founded in 1413, and the third-oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The choir traces its history to the founding of the university itself. Today, the choir has around twenty-five singers, all on scholarships, who sing each week in St Salvator's Chapel. The BBC and Dutch national radio have broadcast them, and they record on the university's own label. Their tours have reached from Washington National Cathedral to the great churches of France and the Netherlands. The Dundee Courier wrote that they "could hold their own in any august company."

Their director, Claire Innes-Hopkins FRCO, trained at Cambridge and at the cathedrals of Rochester, Lincoln and Peterborough. She knows the English repertoire well. Her direction of Vaughan Williams's one-act opera Riders to the Sea received a four-star review in The Times – and Vaughan Williams features in the Château-d'Œx programme. It also includes the Renaissance polyphony of Thomas Tallis, the music of Walton and Bob Chilcott, and works from further afield. Five centuries of choral writing in a single June evening.

One of the choristers has a home in the valley and has performed several times at St Peter's. It was this happy connection that led the director to include Château-d'Œx in the Swiss tour. The town hosts the opening night, before Berne, Neuchâtel and Romainmôtier. That makes this a rare chance to hear singing of this quality on the doorstep – and to hear it first.

Come and give them a warm welcome.

Thursday 4 June 2026, 7.30 pm — St Peter's Anglican Church, Château-d'Œx
Free entry — retiring collection
Full details: stpeters.ch/concert