Tag: Peter Phillips

Inspired By The Sistine Chapel, The Tallis Scholars, St John’s Smith Square, 14 April 2019

Hanging about in that part of Westminster is becoming a habit. The Abbey on the Friday…

A Gresham Society Visit To Westminster Abbey Library & Muniment Room, Plus The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries, 12 April 2019

…and that was not even my first visit of the week to Dean’s Yard…

…then this wonderful Tallis Scholars concert at the start of the St John’s Smith Square (SJSS) Holy Week Festival.

It is hard to explain why, as non-religious people, this type of religious music works so well for me and Janie. I suppose it is simply because we love the music of that Renaissance period and the finest music from the period tends to be the sacred rather than the secular music.

Janie and I enjoyed a pre concert and an interval drink in the crypt, a venue which Janie always enjoys. Great to see something close to a full house at SJSS too; we don’t so often see that, sadly. The place seems warmer when full.

Here is a link to the SJSS resources on this concert. For those who don’t wish to click, the main take away from that material is that this concert showcases music that was guarded by Popes during the high Renaissance within the confines of the Sistine Chapel.

Lots of Palestrina with the magnificent Allegri Miserere as the highlight to kick off the second half of the gig.

Here is a beautiful video of The Tallis Scholars performing the Miserere, albeit some 25 years ago:

As in that 1994 version, at our concert several of the voices spread out across the concert hall, to give an intriguing surround-sound effect.

Below, from that same 1994 concert I believe, is some Palestrina, Nunc Dimittis, not one of the pieces we heard in April 2019:

The Tallis Scholars are always top notch – so professional and such marvellous voices. We hadn’t seen them for a while…

The Tallis Scholars: Isaac and Mouton, Wigmore Hall, 9 March 2017

…the last time we saw them I picked up from the encore the delightful Heinrich Isaac song, Innsbruck Ich Muss Dich Lassen, for my Gresham Society performance that year:

Gresham Society Soirée, Barnards Inn Hall, 14 December 2017

No such simplicity in April 2019 – The Tallis Scholars encore was Lotti’s Crucifixus for eight voices. At least seven-and-three-quarter voices above my pay grade.

Here is another mob, confusingly named Tallis Vocalis, all performing that lovely Lotti at an appropriate pay grade:

The Tallis Scholars concert we enjoyed 14 April 2019 was a simply lovely concert. If you ever get a chance to see them, we really do recommend them highly.

The Tallis Scholars: Isaac and Mouton, Wigmore Hall, 9 March 2017

Been going a very long time

Heinrich Isaac died 500 years ago this month. Peter Phillips and The Tallis Scholars have been around for most of that time…

…OK, not really, but they have been around since the mid 1970s, which is one heck of a long time. What a superb and professional troupe they are.

The concert was billed as being Isaac and Mouton, but in truth it was almost all about Isaac.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resource for the concert we saw/heard. The centrepiece of the first half of the concert was Isaac’s wonderful Missa de apostolis. The second half had more, shorter works; motets, including one by Mouton but the rest all by Isaac.

We spotted Michael Heseltine in the audience a few rows behind us, when we returned from the interval. A bit of a coincidence, as Janie was seeing Angela the next day; Angela was Hesser’s right hand person, back in the day.

We’ve seen The Tallis Scholars before and I have a few of their recordings of Renaissance and Early Baroque music: Brumel, Gombert and Taverner, all excellent. Indeed we listened to this Taverner one – click here – when we got home. 

But before getting home we were treated to a delightful encore of Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen, a choral work attributed to (and probably the best known work of) Isaac. It was one of the greatest hits of the Renaissance. In truth, Isaac almost certainly didn’t write the words and possibly didn’t even write the music. But Isaac did live in Innsbruck at one time and did leave the place, perhaps in sorrow as suggested by the song, c1485. That was around the same time as, in Blighty,  Dick The Shit was feeding worms underneath a forthcoming Leicestershire car park and the Tudor era was just kicking off.

We’re talking nearly 100 years ahead of Greensleeves publication, so Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen might well have been at Number One in the Renaissance charts for some 5000 weeks.

In these circumstances, it seemed only sensible for me to get my head around the words, chords and music – click here.

I’ve been working on that lovely song periodically since. It’ll go down an absolute storm on my baroq-ulele. I’m nowhere near as adept as The Tallis Scholars, needless to say, but they are nowhere near as Baroque-and-roll as me.  You never know, my version might just be the summer hit sensation of 2017.

Here are the King’s Singers giving it a go:

 

 

The Genius of Josquin: Part 2, The Tallis Scholars, Wigmore Hall, 12 October 2000

No idea what Part One was about – presumably Part Two looked the more interesting concert to us or Part One was on a date we couldn’t do.

We heard:

  • Josquin Desprez – Missa Sine nomine
  • Josquin Desprez – Memor esto
  • Josquin Desprez – Victimae paschali
  • Josquin Desprez – Tu solus qui facis mirabilia
  • Heinrich Isaac – Tota pulchra es
  • Nicholas Gombert – Magnificat IV

The Tallis Scholars under the leadership of Peter Phillips are always terrific at this sort of stuff. Among the finest exponents of Josquin, The Tallis Scholars have recorded the lot.

Here’s a link to their recording of Josquin’s Missa Sine Nomine on YouTube Music.

Here’s a more recent example video:

Here’s a recording of them singing Heinrich Issac’s Tota Pulchra Es:

While here is a short excerpt from the Gombert Magnificat.

I’m pretty sure that I bought my copy of that CD, with all the Gombert Magnificats, at that concert. That’s a recording I return to quite often, as it is so good. Here’s a link to the whole thing on YouTube Music.

A splendid Thursday evening at The Wig.

Sargent Cancer Care For Children Concert At The Wigmore Hall, 26 September 2000

Actually Julian Bream had to drop out of this concert at the last minute, so we got everyone else, but not him. We also got all the other pieces, but not the Bach Cello suite on the guitar.

I made no note about a replacement piece, so I suspect we had a shortened concert. This is what we heard:

  • Thomas Tallis – Loquebantur
  • John Taverner – Quemadmodum
  • William Byrd – Tribue, Domine 
  • Fryderyk Chopin – Ballade No 1 in G minor, op 23
  • Johannes Brahms – Intermezzo in A major, op 118 no 2 –
  • Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner – Isoldens Liebestod
  • Leos Janacek – String Quartet no 2

My only other log note is that we bumped into James Davidson, who was (or probably by then, had been) the Director of Finance at Cancer Research Campaign, one of my earliest Z/Yen clients in the mid 1990s. He lived nearby in Notting Hill Gate and used to address me (in the street or at CRC) as “Lord Harris”, because he said my fee rates were so high. When we asked him for a testimonial to put on our spanking new Z/Yen website, he said:

expensive, but worth it…

…which we thought at the time was as good as it gets.

I suspect that this Tuesday night charity concert was expensive but worth it too.

Sadly, Julian Bream never recorded his live party piece of playing the BWV1012 Cello Suite on the guitar, but here’s a recording of a fine guitarist, Paulo Martelli, who has recorded his playing of part of it live:

So there’s the stuff we didn’t see or hear.

Here’s a recording of the Tallis Scholars singing Loquebantur, which is wonderful:

Here’s the Gesualdo Six singing Taverner’s Quemadmodum

Back to The Tallis Scholars, as there is a vid of them singing The Byrd:

PHILLIPS: Hey, are you looking at my Byrd?

There’s not a lot of Martin Roscoe to be found on-line – but here is Krystian Zimerman playing the Chopin:

I don’t suppose the Janáček string quartet much pleased us. Here’s the Amphion String Quartet doing their level best with it:

The things we do for charity.