Saturday, 6 November 2004, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew
Subscription Concert 4
Concert 4 consists of 21 items from the Cantiones sacrae published by Thomas Tallis and William Byrd in 1575. Each contributed 17 motets to the collection, presumably celebrating the seventeenth year of the reign of Elizabeth I, to whom it is dedicated.
PROGRAM
Thomas Tallis Te lucis ante terminum (2 settings)
Thomas Tallis Salvator mundi
Thomas Tallis Miserere nostri
Thomas Tallis In jejunio et fletu
Thomas Tallis Derelinquat impius
Thomas Tallis In manus tuas
Thomas Tallis Dum transisset Sabbatum
Thomas Tallis Candidi facti sunt Nazarei
Thomas Tallis O nata lux
Thomas Tallis Suscipe quaeso
William Byrd Attollite portas
William Byrd Miserere mihi, Domine
William Byrd Emendemus in melius
William Byrd Memento homo
William Byrd Tribue, Domine
William Byrd Siderum rector
William Byrd Laudate, pueri, Dominum
William Byrd O lux, beata Trinitas
| SOPRANO | ALTO | TENOR | BASS |
| Deborah Summerbell | Belinda Wong | Peter Campbell | Alexander Roose |
| Carol Veldhoven | Jennifer Mathers | Tim Van Nooten | Thomas Drent |
| Kathryn Pisani | Jenny George | Frank Prain | Tom Reid |
| Fiona Seers | Barbara Tattam | Vaughan McAlley | Philip Nicholls |
| Maria Pisani | |||
| Helen Gagliano |
–
REVIEW
Thursday, 11 November, The Age [Melbourne], page 6, A3.
Gombert’s Precision; ACO’s dash
Clive O’Connell
BACK from their first European tour, the Ensemble Gombert singers worked through two brackets of Tudor
motets by Thomas Tallis and William Byrd. Touring the composers’ ground-breaking joint publication,
Cantiones sacrae, the program comprised about two-thirds of that volume’s contents.
John O’Donnell and his gifted group presented both ends of the English Renaissance musical
spectrum – from the brief and plaintive Miserere nostri, Domine by Tallis, to the exhausting, imaginative
vaults in Byrd’s Tribue, Domine. Yet again, the group demonstrated its precision of pitch and enunciation, the
sinewy arches of this marvellous polyphony holding as firm as the flying buttresses they mimic.
The fiercely difficult Dum transisset Sabbatum by Tallis requires the first sopranos to sing continuously at the
top of their range. Despite some anxious moments, this gripping work swept to a secure conclusion.
[…]
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age