The Tallis Scholars & Peter Phillips - The Tallis Scholars Sing Thomas Tallis: Spem In Alium (2004)

When you see a title like The Tallis Scholars Sing Thomas Tallis, you know the music's going to be right, sort of like when you hear Aretha Franklin sing in Detroit, or hear an oversize band of Central Europeans play Mahler. And so it is. This disc compiles Tallis Scholars recordings from 1985, 1986, 1992, and 1998 for the purpose of, per the jacket, "celebrating the 500th anniversary of Thomas Tallis" (they mean birth, not wedding). The performances are classics, and better still, this reissue is not just about trying to mine continued profits from the same lode: Gimell's decision to release two packed-to-the-max CDs of Tallis Scholars Tallis allows the listener to become immersed in what director Peter Phillips calls Tallis' "ability to create masterpieces in whatever style was the currency of the day." Tallis was (again quoting Phillips) an "arch-survivor," composing dense, sumptuous motets for Catholic rulers, creating beautiful miniatures like the well-known If Ye Love Me under the severe regime of early Anglicanism, and summing up his career with major masterpieces like Spem in alium under Queen Elizabeth's golden reign. The disc leads off with that mysterious 40-voice motet, which has been recorded in various ways. Phillips leads a mixed (male and female) choir of 40 adults, one to a part, with the music raised a fourth from its notated pitch. This pitch choice has been criticized as inauthentic, but it elicits slightly piercing attacks from Phillips' singers -- just the thing to clarify what's happening in a piece of music with 40 different parts and to forestall an indistinct wash of sound. Tallis' profound Lamentations of Jeremiah have been recorded many times, but the version here is perhaps the premier choice from the heart of the English choral tradition. The discs' packaging is handsome (even if Filippo Lippi isn't quite the artist one would choose as a visual analogue to Tallis), and the sound holds together well; the sonic ambiences of the two different churches where the music was recorded, Merton College Chapel in Oxford and Salle Church in Norfolk, are different but equally interesting. This is a release that can serve as a cornerstone of any Renaissance music CD library. -- James Manheim