New leader at Handel and Haydn

Harry Christophers says he plans to focus on the company's core composers.

Harry Christophers, the British founder of the acclaimed period group The Sixteen, will today be named the artistic director of the Handel and Haydn Society. Christophers, 54, replaces Grant Llewellyn, who stepped down as music director in 2006, shortly after being named music director of the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra. Llewellyn will remain with Handel and Haydn through this season as principal conductor. Sir Roger Norrington, who has served as artistic adviser, will also step down, at the end of this season.

Both Llewellyn and Norrington will continue as guest conductors, said executive director Marie-Hélène Bernard.

In an interview, Christophers said he planned no wholesale changes for Handel and Haydn, though he intends to focus on the core composers more than the society has in recent years.

"There will perhaps be less of the romantic, or the early romantic music," Christophers said. "They've done a lot of Beethoven and been going into Brahms. For me, I feel there is so much to be gained around the periods of Handel and Haydn that, for the next couple of years, I don't think we need to go outside that. The Handel and Haydn Society is a great brand name. You've got two of the great composers of baroque and classical music. Let's concentrate on those two people. We don't really need to go beyond those boundaries."

Christophers said he will continue as leader of The Sixteen, which he founded in 1979, and maintain his home in England. He will spend five to six weeks in Boston each season, staying at the Colonnade Hotel.

Bernard said that Christophers has brought a great deal of energy to the organization during guest conducting stints, particularly the performances of "The Messiah" he led last year.

"You should come to a concert with a sense of excitement and you should leave the concert with the sense of the 'wow' feeling," she said. "This is the kind of vision he's bringing to the organization."

Christophers will serve as artistic director designate for the upcoming season, which he did not program. His contract runs for three additional seasons, through 2011-12. Bernard said Christophers will conduct at least four of the Society's nine programs each season. She would not say what the organization, which has as a $2.3 million annual budget, will pay Christophers. Llewellyn earned $132,917 in his last year as artistic director.

When asked to detail an example of a program he's looking forward to, Christophers talked of plans in 2009-2010 to pair the well-known piece Mozart's Mass in C Minor with the more obscure "Venite populi."

"This was a rarely heard double choir," said Christophers. "This particular piece was loved by Brahms but it's very rarely performed since."

Christophers says that he once thought he would never want to do anything other than The Sixteen. But he was excited when the Handel and Hayden Society called.

"First of all, Boston is a great place," he said. "Secondly, this is a very established society but it needs to get to a much, much wider public."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com