Search - Thomas Tallis, The Sixteen, Harry Christophers :: Tallis: Spem in Alium [HYBRID SACD]

Thomas Tallis, The Sixteen, Harry Christophers
Tallis: Spem in Alium [HYBRID SACD]
Genres: Pop, Classical

Track Listings (9) - Disc #1
1. Spem in alium: Thomas Tallis
2. O all true faithful hearts: Orlando Gibbons
3. Deus venerunt gentes: William Byrd
4. Know you not: Thomas Tomkins
5. Great King of Gods: Orlando Gibbons
6. O God, the heathen are come: Thomas Tomkins
7. Te Deum: Thomas Tallis
8. Be strong: Thomas Tomkins
9. Sing and glorify: Thomas Tallis:

?Note: This Super Audio-Hybrid CD will play on all conventional CD Players. The Sixteens anthology of a century of royal repertoire composed for monarchs and magnates is the real thing: a masterpiece of detective work, ra... more »

CD Details

All Artists: Thomas Tallis, The Sixteen, Harry Christophers
Title: Tallis: Spem in Alium [HYBRID SACD]
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Label: Coro
Original Release Date: 1/1/2006
Re-Release Date: 1/1/2003
Album Type: Hybrid SACD - DSD
Genres: Pop, Classical
Styles: Vocal Pop, Opera & Classical Vocal, Historical Periods, Baroque (c.1600-1750), Early Music
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 828021601620

Synopsis

Album Description

?Note: This Super Audio-Hybrid CD will play on all conventional CD Players. The Sixteen’s anthology of a century of royal repertoire composed ‘for monarchs and magnates’ is the real thing: a masterpiece of detective work, rare repertoire and artful editing, and a fitting celebration of its first quarter-century devoted to early music. Pride of place goes to a pair of recordings of Tallis’s Spem in alium, in Latin and in English (as Sing and Glorify), the rich mingling of its eight five-voice choirs revealingly captured in the spacious clarity of surround sound, a process that could have been invented for this purpose. Harry Christophers’s booklet note explores the possible origins and challenging symbolism of this work, a theme even more potently expressed in Byrd’s motet ‘Deus venerunt gentes’. Another religious exclamation (but this time protesting against Puritan excesses in the Civil War), Tomkins’s grandly tortured outpouring ‘O God, the heathen are come’, is recorded for the first time in John Milsom’s reconstruction. Sackbuts and cornets add splendor to ceremonial items by Tallis and Gibbons, and in the hands of these skilled players also add their note of sublime grief to another Tomkins score: ‘Know you not’, a lament for Henry, Prince of Wales, that forms the emotional heart of this collection. – BBC Music Magazine.

CD Reviews

Not up to par...my par anyway.

Christopher Lowrey | Johnston, RI United States | 01/06/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"OK. So you want some great 16th century English anthems plus a little Thomas Tallis? I bought this disc hoping to hear an invigorating, reimagined performance of the Spem in Alium, after not having listened to one as decent as the Tallis Scholars', produced some 20 years ago. The Sixteen do not achieve what I had hoped. To my ears, most of the pieces on the disc (although less egregiously in the title track) sound hastily rehearsed and thrown together. The soprano sound is at times overbearing, to be expected, but more often than not, lacquered with a strident and uncontrolled vibrato. The male alto sound on this disc was particularly out of date and style. You will not find the sort of serene and stylish alto sound you would on a Tallis Scholars disc with Caroline Trevor and Patrick Craig or Robert Harre-Jones. These male altos sound like very mediocre cathedral clerks who were hired just for this recording. The basses are also prone to excessive warble which more often than not distracts from the clarity of the polyphonic line. The shining stars in this collection are soprano Rebecca Outram and tenor Andrew Carwood, a pair who already comfortably work with one another in their own group, the Cardinall's Musick, who is the only real rival of the Tallis Scholars these days, in terms of emotive ability, clarity and precision, and overall effect. What makes this CD worth listening to, if not buying, is the Sing and Glorify contrafactum to Spem in Alium. It has been earlier recorded by at least one speciality group, (Chapelle du Roi under Alistair Dixon) but here receives a lush treatment of doubling sackbuts and cornets which bring a panoramic resonance to the table.
There are other great singers lurking somewhere in the texture who know how to treat this music: Deborah Roberts, Elin Manahan Thomas, (has done a few recordings with Clare College Choir wonderfully) Sally Dunkley (who has prepared several of the editions for this project), Caroline Trevor, and Francis Steele, but they are sadly hidden away for most of the disc behind the Sixteen's major stars, who are, I'm afraid, just not up to par on this recording. If you want perfectly blended, mellifluous, straight-tone singing, with superb intonation, listen to Peter Phillip's disc of this flash of brilliance that was the capstone of Tallis' illustrious career. If you'd like to try something a bit more gutsy, less polished, and louder (it nearly blew my dinky speakers out) look no further.Just my two cents."