The Tallis Scholars under director Peter Phillips have cultivated a cool, Apollonian sound in a cappella Renaissance vocal music that can be awe-inspiringly beautiful in Flemish polyphony, and especially in the spare English repertory for which they are named. This small, mixed-gender adult choir might not seem an ideal group to take on the darker hues of Tomás Luís de Victoria, but the set of Lamentations of Jeremiah recorded here, music for Holy Week, is quite well suited to their talents. As Phillips points out in his elegant notes (in English, German, and French), Victoria's "Spanish" style was largely forged in Rome, and his somberness was in many ways a personal rather than a national characteristic.
Handel arrived in Hamburg in 1703, aged eighteen. He spent four years in the city and wrote several works for the town's opera house. Hamburg opera was a rather eclectic beast at the time, drawing on Italian and French language and instrumental style alongside the native German. Handel fell happily into this genre; this CD brings together a selection of the delightful orchestral music (which tends to be in the French style) that Handel wrote there, some of it recorded for the first time.
Turn down the lights and get out your joss-sticks for this one: a selection of sixteenth-century Tenebrae music for Holy Week, among the most evocative parts of the liturgy. Since they had already made successful recordings of the Brumel, Tallis and White, it was a good idea for The Tallis Scholars to add new recordings of Tenebrae settings by Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder and Palestrina. As Peter Phillips points out in his brief note, the only textual feature they have in common is their all ending with the passage “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum”. Otherwise the texts that the various composers selected from the Lamentations of Jeremiah are quite different; but all show an intensity and a devotional power that work cumulatively to produce a remarkably satisfying disc. And it is endlessly fascinating to hear the different approaches to these anguished texts.
A well-packed disc, for those who love a good long play. But, more to the point, the singing and recording are outstanding. And what music is here enshrined! … readers may be a little weary of praises for The Tallis Scholars. There is no other course. This is surely one of the supreme choirs of the world. Peter Phillips, whose notes are revelatory reading, has reached the heart of this sublime music.
A pupil of William Byrd, Thomas Tomkins' technique as a contrapuntalist was second to none, as can be heard in the Great Service or the anthem O God, the proud are risen against me. In this respect alone he was the composer who most obviously continued Byrd's achievement.
During the years before and after 1600, Portugal produced a small crop of masterful Requiem Masses. All of them seem to have taken Victoria's famous six-voice Requiem as a model, setting the traditional chant melodies in long notes in one of the soprano parts, accompanied by harmonious chords rather than imitative counterpoint. The Requiem by Duarte Lôbo presented here is a particularly good example. Like his compatriots, Lôbo composed his Requiem in a major tonality; Victoria's captivating gloom is replaced by an equally captivating sweetness–this funeral music is anything but morose. The Missa vox clamantis is altogether more extroverted, with a striking octave leap that begins every movement. Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars give the skillful, sonorous performances we've come to expect from them.