Tag: John Sheppard

Songs For Troubled Times – Music From Reformation England, Cinquecento, Wigmore Hall, 7 November 2022

We do like a bit of Renaissance music at the Wig. This lunchtime concert seemed just the ticket when we booked it months ago and still seemed like a coveted ticket come the day.

We had heard of Cinquecento but not seen them before, although it seems they have been around for some time.

Below is a mini taster of them singing some other stuff…

…while our concert focussed on English Reformation period composers: John Sheppard, Thomas Tallis, Christopher Tye & William Byrd.

If you have found this Ogblog piece within 30 days of the concert, you can still hear the BBC Radio 3 broadcast of it through this link to BBC Sounds.

The Wigmore Hall streamed this concert. The stream can be found through this link if you would like to see it – I’m not sure if you need to register or not to see/hear it this way.

We thought it was an excellent concert. This size of ensemble and style of music works perfectly, to our ears, in The Wigmore Hall. The Tallis in particular was a memorably wonderful sound.

Stile Antico, Wigmore Hall, In Pace: Music For Compline, 27 November 2015

What a wonderful way to end the working week; a concert of beautiful early music.  We’ve seen Stile Antico before at the Wigmore Hall; they are a truly inspirational vocal ensemble.

We ran into Eric Rhode and his wife, Maria at this concert, as often we do.  He is no doubt at the Wigmore Hall even as I write, as I know there is early music on there right now, a couple of weeks’ after the Stile Antico event.

You can read all about Stile Antico and the superb programme of early music, if you choose to click here and browse the prgramme.

Revisiting this article in May 2020 during Covid-19 lockdown, I am glad to see that, in 2015, Stile Antico showed off their skills by singing Renaissance pieces that were designed for 12 voices. Lockdown has strangely enabled the group to multiply virtually, producing the following delicious 40 part performance of Tallis’s Spem In Alium:

But in truth, the concert we heard that might would have looked and sounded more like the following recording from 2013 of William Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus at The Wig itself:

They’re good, I’m telling you, they’re good.

Treasures Of The Renaissance – Masterpieces From The Golden Age Of Choral Music, Stile Antico, 11 May 2014

Just gorgeous, this concert was.

Here is a link to the helpful Wigmore Hall calendar note that tells you exactly what we saw.

This was Renaissance choral music at its best.

Barry Millington in the Evening Standard gave the gig this rave review – click here.

Below is a vid of Stile Antico, singing Ego flos campi by Jacobus Clemens non papa, which was the second piece they sang to us and which gives a very good sense of their glorious sound:

Coincidentally, the above recording was made at the Old Royal Naval College which I shall be visiting in a few day’s time (as I write in January 2018), although not for music purposes.

For those who are not blessed with Latin scholarship, “Ego flos campi” means, “I maintain my oral hygiene when I go camping”…

…although those words are occasionally mistranslated by so-called experts as, “I am the flower of the field”.

Anyway, enough of scholarship. Janie and I had enjoyed an early music oriented weekend from start (Joanna MacGregor tinkling the Goldberg on the Friday) to finish – we had no complaints about that.

Play that vid again, go on…gorgeous it is.

Byrd: The Popish Organist, The Cardinall’s Musick, Wigmore Hall, 7 October 2011

Oy! Are You Looking At My Byrd?…

…was not the title of this concert by The Cardinall’s Musick…

…although Andrew Carwood does always give his concerts a title. Perhaps he’ll use my suggestion some time soon.

Still, this exceptional group of singers tends to fill the Wigmore Hall whenever it appears, for good reason.

Here is a link to the on-line programme of music for the evening.

We’d seen them perform before and had even previously seen one of their concerts at which Andrew Carwood explained the sectarian political backdrop to the music in those Tudor times…

…it must have been like the politics of Brexit but with capital punishment in place of the earhole bashing.

No wonder these Tudor composers took solus in lamentations and such Jeremiad material.

As usual with such concerts, it was fascinating to hear the contrast between the lesser and the better known composers; Tallis and especially Byrd being the better known and better represented composers on the night. The better known fellows deserve their status in my view; certainly for this type of music.

Here (click through for more details) and below is a vid taster of The Cardinalls Musick singing Tallis Lamentations and other such sacred works:

A wonderfully relaxing concert at the end of a busy week at work.