Tallis Scholars

[Black Swan]

Yes, but only the last 3 performances due to work Schedule. Ex Cathedra, B'rock orchestra and Courtiers of Grace: A Rose There Is, Christmas from Martin Luther's family table featuring Clare Wilkinson and co.

Very good but had to miss the Marian Consort.

[Vox Humana]

I hope I won't offend anyone if I say that, generally speaking, I tend to find the sound of both the Tallis Scholars and The Sixteen rather clinical. Their technical perfection is awesome, but the end result can feel "forensic". I remember many years ago one of the young women who sang with the Clerkes of Oxenford telling me how, at rehearsals (I think it may have been while they were making their LPs for Calliope), David Wulstan kept banging on about singing more sexily. If you compare their recordings with almost any from the other two groups, the difference is obvious. To be fair, The Clerkes were a bigger choir, so perhaps a warmer tone was to some extent built in, but the Brabant Ensemble's CD of Music from the Chirk Partbooks has a very similar sort of warmth and sensuousness and Stile Antico also deliver in this respect. The Gloria from the Tallis Scholars' recording of Puer natus is on YouTube and it is certainly neither bland nor devoid of warmth, but for some reason I still get the feeling that I am doing the aural equivalent of looking down a microscope. I cannot pinpoint why, but am wondering whether differing approaches to the recording process might be responsible. I am not a singer, however, so there might well be other subtleties involved of which I know nothing.

[jean]

...the Brabant Ensemble's CD of Music from the Chirk Partbooks has a very similar sort of warmth and sensuousness and Stile Antico also deliver in this respect...

Some overlap of personnel there of course!

[ardcarp]

the Tallis Scholars and The Sixteen rather clinical.

Surprised to see them in the same sentence! Chris puts things very well. It depends what you like. The Tallis Scholars do it in their inimitable way which has clearly been a great success. (Note, their sound has changed a bit over the years.) At a less exalted level, Buckfast Abbey regularly gets a full house for choirs singing pure, slow Renaissance and 20th C minimalist stuff. A certain audience likes it meditational. But there is no single way to realise Renaissance music. Harry Christophers and the Sixteen put more light and shade into things...but you could go a whole lot further down the expressive route and swoop and scoop and use harsher sounds, evoking Mediterranean garlic and vinegar. (George Malcolm and WC in the 60s?) Personally I enjoy different ways of doing things, and we are lucky to be able to choose from a wide palette. And who knows what might come next?

[Miles Coverdale]

A Tallis Scholars concert from 12 December in Cambridge MA is available to listen to here. It includes Sheppard's Sacris solemniis and Gaude, gaude, gaude Maria, Tallis's Mass Puer natus est nobis and Pärt's Magnificat.