Search - The King's Singers, Thomas Tallis :: Thomas Tallis: Spem in Alium [Hybrid SACD]

SINGLES BAR

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 06/11/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The music here is a glorious ancient masterpiece, the singing is superlative, the sense of style shown is exemplary, the recording is very good except for a minor blemish, and even the liner-note is excellent.



Nevertheless you may attribute the award of as many stars as three in this instance at least as much to my own habitual benevolence as to what this production really deserves. It goes by the title of a `cd single'. It is the first of its kind to come my way, and I very much hope it will be the last as well. A cd single is something like a stretch-limo being driven around with only one passenger - it's a waste of space and resources. A cd has the capacity for 80 minutes of music, and if someone decides to issue a cd containing only 8 I expect to see this matter reflected proportionately in the pricing. I don't dispute in the least that this recording is very special in some ways, but so are any number of others that come to mind, and the proper course should still have been to fill up the available capacity with other performances, very likely reissues.



Tallis's great motet Spem in Alium was written for 40 solo voices, and there are altogether 6 members of the King's Singers. `6 into 40 doesn't go very well' one of them informs us in the short recorded commentary that accompanies the motet. 6 into 40 goes perfectly well 6 and 2/3 times, what doesn't go is 40 into 6. What the King's Singers have elected to do is utilise modern recording technology so as to take all 40 parts among the 6 of them. I don't question for a moment that this cannot have been straightforward in the least, but it's not exactly new either. More years ago than I care to count there was a record of Bach's concerto for 2 violins with Heifetz playing both solo parts, not so far as I know simultaneously. More recently the Emerson Quartet have given us a performance of Mendelssohn's Octet played by the 4 of them, however they and their producers did not issue this as any cd single but gave us all Mendelssohn's quartets into the bargain. For the most part the challenge has been met very successfully here, the only problem being an odd semi-metallic repeated sound that runs through the entirety of the piece.



The short verbal contribution that the singers give doesn't really say very much that their liner-note hadn't already said, nor indeed say it as well, but it does mention that they had to bring the written pitch down by a tone. This does not worry me in the least, pitch being the variable and ill-defined thing that it has been historically. The motet was almost certainly written with boy trebles in mind for the top parts, and the King's Singers have done the right and sensible thing in bringing it within the comfortable compass of their high counter-tenor. The liner-note is very good, but I had to smile at their innocent comment on the early doubts they entertained and how these were finally resolved - `This version was better than we could have hoped for'. That's that in that case, I guess. From my own less involved viewpoint their version is superlative. The peculiar recording flaw bothers me very little after a lifetime of listening to LP's, but other prospective buyers need to be warned of it. I don't in fact regret buying the disc for an instant, nor do I wish to advise anyone else not to. What I do wish is to propose a total and immediate embargo on further cd singles."

Wonderful achievement.

Benjamin L. Filippone | Pittsburgh, PA United States | 03/04/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The King's Singers have taken on the challenge of singing "Spem In Alium", the famous 40 part motet by Thomas Tallis, by means of multitrack recording technology and accomplished a suprisingly successful recording. Coordinating 40 different voice parts, most of which come and go in a myriad of different ways, must have been quite a daunting task, especially without having the benefit of a conductor or the other 34 singers. The result of their efforts is a very special recording of this music, featuring extraordinary sound quality and surround-sound technology, unmatched clarity of all 40 parts, and a mistake-free performance with the most expert possible choral singers on each part. The King's Singers individually even went so far as to use a slightly different vocal color for the different parts they recorded to add to the illusion that there are 40 different people singing, avoiding monotony and giving individual character to each voice part.



The music itself of course is a phenomenon all its own. Its soaring beauty and craftmanship is staggering, containing every possible choral contrapuntal texture from completely individual free counterpoint to block chords echoing antiphonally. While not intended to be the definitive recording of the piece (some purists obviously won't like the concept), it definitely offers something new. The admittedly annoying concept of a CD single notwithstanding, it is very worth buying and even includes a track with commentary from the King's Singers."

Confused

R. Gheesling | NY, NY | 07/01/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Is it my imagination or did the review below not actually say what the technical flaw is. As a recording engineer, I'm curious."