The Gentlemen of Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace / Carl Jackson THOMAS TALLIS GENTLEMAN OF THE CHAPEL ROYAL

The Gentlemen of HM Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace and their director Carl Jackson make their Resonus Classics debut with this album of works for lower voices by Thomas Tallis – himself a Gentleman of the Tudor Chapel Royal serving under four monarchs.

Recorded in the impressive surroundings of the Chapel Royal where the choir is resident, this first disc with The Gentlemen presents works for four and seven voices including the Missa Puer natus est nobis based on chant for Christmas Day, and the sumptuous Suscipe quaeso Domine.

Cantus Thuringia TIME STANDS STILL

Hope? Time and again it is hidden at best. Consolation? A little, but it is subliminal at most. Sadness, grief, melancholy? These are present in abundance. Anyone who sets out to discover English music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will time and again stumble upon constants that left their mark on this music over an astonishingly lengthy period of time. The characteristics of melancholy may be found not only in the secular music of a Renaissance composer like John Dowland but also – several decades later – in the sacred music of two Baroque composers, Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell.

These two epochs share common features and complement one another amazingly well – “even though Dowland and Purcell each developed and cultivated a distinctive personal style, making it generally easy to recognize their authorship very quickly,” declares Christoph Dittmar, who functions as primus inter pares – the first among equals – in this new album from Cantus Thuringia. This congruity is all the more remarkable in that 132 years separate the year of Dowland’s birth from that of Purcell’s death. “By way of comparison take the elderly Telemann and the young Mozart – their lives overlapped, and yet their music is worlds apart.” It may be possible to explain this by reference to the English vocal and, more especially, choral tradition that evolved over a period of several centuries and that continued to leave its mark on composers such as Benjamin Britten.

According to Christoph Dittmar, what particularly attracted Cantus Thuringia to this programme was “the intimacy of the reduced resources, especially when compared to our previous recordings, which were devoted to a German repertory scored for relatively large forces. An additional factor was the interest shown by the recorder player Silvia Müller, who wanted to work with a vocal ensemble in her search for new challenges. “And so we chose pieces in which the recorder plays diminutions – embellishments – sometimes as the upper voice, sometimes as the middle voice. The recorder was extremely popular in England at this time and remained so until the eighteenth century, with entire recorder consorts being permanently engaged at certain courts.”

Daniel Taylor / The Trinity Choir THE PATH TO PARADISE

The word sublime should never be used lightly, but if ever a collection of music warrants the term it's this one. In keeping with its title, this latest recording by Daniel Taylor and the Trinity Choir, their follow-up to Four Thousand Winter and the Juno-nominated The Tree of Life, offers a direct route to paradise, its figurative access achieved when the immediate space is filled with its glorious vocal performances. The set-list is dominated by choral works from the sixteenth century, the two by Arvo Pärt obvious exceptions. His pieces, as anyone familiar with the Estonian composer's output will have already guessed, sit comfortably alongside those by Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Nicolas Gombert, and others. Though their works are set to sacred texts about the soul's lifelong struggle to achieve salvation, The Path To Paradise presents spiritually replenishing music whose rapturous beauty is capable of speaking to the faithful and non-faithful alike. (Textura.org)

Contrapunctus / Owen Rees IN THE MIDST OF LIFE Music from the Baldwin Partbooks I

Early music needs another British vocal ensemble like a meerkat needs car insurance. It’s a field that’s already standing-room only, with long-established groups jostling with younger rivals for space. But Contrapunctus are special. Their first disc, ‘Libera nos: The Cry of the Oppressed’ (Signum, 11/13), was seriously, startlingly good: the intimacy of The Cardinall’s Musick, the rich, glowing tone of The Sixteen and the textual drama of Stile Antico. Their second disc proves that this was no one-off.

It’s a shame that both the group’s name and the rather earnest cover of ‘In the Midst of Life’ (subtitled ‘Music from the Baldwin Partbooks, Vol 1’) may dissuade casual listeners from exploring the contents, because they would find much to delight here. This first selection from the rich Baldwin repertoire (Latin-texted English church music) broods on mortality, death and judgement. Works by Byrd, Tallis, Parsons and Sheppard feature alongside the odd wildcard—Dericke Gerarde’s Sive vigilem is a quietly extraordinary discovery.

Contrapunctus play a long game with this often slow-paced, meditative repertoire. These are understated performances whose moment-to-moment drama is less striking than the long, aching arcs they achieve over five or six minutes—director Owen Rees shows his experience here, making a case for a conductor in a climate in which musical democracy is increasingly king.

Choral blend is mossy-soft and balance immaculate, perfect for the yearning loveliness of Taverner’s Quemadmodum or Sheppard’s Media vita. After two discs of penitence, however, I’d love to hear something a bit more rhythmic, more energetic in their next release. If Contrapunctus can do vivid attack as well as they do misty piety, they may find themselves setting the bar in this repertoire. (Alexandra Coghlan / Gramophone)

New York Polyphony TIMES GO BY TURNS Byrd / Plummer / Tallis

In the years when the four women of Anonymous 4 were regularly recording, you looked forward to each new release, knowing that they would consistently offer first-rate performances and thoughtful, enlightening programs. So far, the four men of New York Polyphony have maintained a similar standard of world-class performance and engaging programming. You may not think the world yearns for another Byrd 4-part Mass recording—that is, until you hear these four male voices sing it. Sure, you’ve heard the Tallis Scholars’ reference version, but have you ever heard it performed by just four voices, ideally matched, of uniquely compatible timbre, combined into such a richly resonant sound? Not to mention theRead more nuances of phrasing, of breathing, of inflection obtainable only by small ensembles whose members are closely bonded personally and are musically of one mind. It’s sung a major-third down from its usual key, and although generally taken at a slightly faster pace than we’re used to (the Agnus Dei a bit too fast to wrench its full emotional impact), in this decidedly non-liturgical context you appreciate the purposeful flow and momentum.
The “early music” part of the program also includes two rarely-heard but eminently worthy works, the Missa sine nomine by English composer John Plummer (1410-1483) and Thomas Tallis’ Mass for Four Voices. The latter, minus a Kyrie, features some of the most gorgeous passages of pure homophony you will hear, sparingly interspersed with polyphonic sections. Here, you really appreciate the vibrant quality of this quartet’s sound, as well as the effect on the ear of such impeccably tuned chords.
Modern works by Richard Rodney Bennett (A Colloquy with God), Andrew Smith (Kyrie: Cunctipotens Genitor Deus), and Gabriel Jackson (Ite missa est) fit perfectly, not just because of their texts, but because of their basic musical compatibility with the older works—set in a modern-tonal structure that respects the sacred-spiritual context. All three of these pieces were written for New York Polyphony; Jackson’s jaunty, jazzy Ite missa est is an ingeniously written little gem, a program-ending highlight that shows off the composer’s affecting harmonic concept and inventive rhythmic textual treatment along with the singers’ most delicate ensemble virtuosity. The sound on this SACD recording, from a Swedish church, is consistent with BIS’s usual high standard. Recommended with the assurance that you will listen to this disc often. (David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com)