Prom 50: The Sixteen Sings Tallis’s Spem in album (24.08.22)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

22:15 Wednesday 24 August 2022
Royal Albert Hall

Trad: Plainsong ‘Salve Regina’
John Tavener: A Hymn to the Mother of God
Thomas Tallis: Spem in alium
Sir James MacMillan: Miserere
Christopher Tye: Missa ‘Euge bone’ – Agnus Dei
Henryk Mikołaj Górecki: Totus tuus
John Sheppard: Missa ‘Cantate’ – Agnus Dei
Sir James MacMillan: Vidi aquam
William Byrd: Diliges Dominum

The Sixteen
Harry Christophers conductor

Now in its fifth decade, Harry Christophers’s chamber choir The Sixteen is one of the enduring wonders of the choral scene, its precision and effortlessly expressive singing touching audiences all over the world. This late-night meditation in the Royal Albert Hall centres on Tallis’s extraordinary Spem in alium – the magnificent 40-voice motet that’s one of the supreme achievements of the English musical Renaissance. Around it, like planets in orbit, The Sixteen weaves a sequence of choral music that criss-crosses a millennium, extending from medieval plainsong to the 21st century, and works – such as Sir James MacMillan’s Miserere – that were created specially for The Sixteen’s sublimely beautiful sound.

[jonfan]

The Sixteen and ‘friends’ with a sublime concert to a packed RAH. Harry Christophers knows how to put an enticing programme together, tonight centring around two 40 part pieces by Tallis and MacMillan. The choir and engineering brought out the individual lines, excitingly contrasted with homophonic tuttis. The old and the new were from no particular time, just hanging there in the generous space. The Sixteen have just the right amount of expressive nuance in their performances that makes them stand out from the rest. Special pieces for me were the Gorecki and MacMillan’s Miserere, with its whiff of Allegri.
Ideally it would have been better to keep the atmosphere if there was no applause between pieces; I’ll listen again that way with lights dimmed and a glass of something to hand - heaven!
A shame the excellent Ian Skelly hasn’t been persuaded to present a TV prom, or maybe he thinks he has, like Eddie Mair, just a face ‘good for radio’. I hope not.

PS. Cameras in Tallis’s day? It would be fascinating to have a thumb through his photos Alpie!

[bluestateprommer]

Just a quick mini-thread bump to recommend The Sixteen's (augmented to 40+ where appropriate, as Ian Skelly mentioned a few times) late-night Prom, performed up to their usual high standard. Had to cobble various CD pdf's booklets, mainly via the Chandos website, to access most of the texts to be able to follow along (and thus to jump back and forth between pdf's). Good to know that the RAH was packed out, especially for a late-night concert.

[smittims]

It's gratifying to hear of a packed-out Albert Hall for Tallis, as it was for the Bach Sonatas and Partitas a few years ago, especially at a time when classical music is so unfashionable with the Government and commercial world. Both composers woudl, I think, have been amazed to hear that their music drew such crowds centuries after their death. I think CDs have had a lot to do with this; it's difficult to imagine it happening sixty years ago, when arguable, classical music had a higher status in Britain .