Saturday, 28 May 2005, 8pm
Xavier College Chapel, Barkers Road, Kew
Subscription Concert 2
We are ignorant of the exact date of Thomas Tallis’s birth, but circa 1505 has long been accepted, and half a millenium after the event, the possibility that we are a year or two out is of little significance. Concert Two is a selection of pieces from the simplest (the four-voice anthem If ye love me) to the most complex (the celebrated forty-voice Spem in alium), and from the most luxuriant (the six-voice Marian motet Gaude gloriosa) to the most austere (the moving five-voice Lamentations).
PROGRAM
Thomas Tallis Third Mode Melody (Why fum’th in sight)
Thomas Tallis If ye Love me
Thomas Tallis I Call and Cry to thee
Thomas Tallis Jesu salvator saeculi
Thomas Tallis Loquebantur variis linguis
Thomas Tallis Gaude gloriosa
Thomas Tallis Lamentations
Thomas Tallis Spem in alium (à 40)
| SOPRANO Deborah Summerbell Carol Veldhoven Kathryn Pisani Claerwen Jones Maria Pisani Helen Gagliano |
ALTO Belinda Wong Jennifer Mathers Rebecca Woods Niki Ebacioni Leonie Tonkin Barbara Tattam |
TENOR Peter Campbell Tim Van Nooten Vaughan McAlley Stuart Tennant |
BASS Alexander Roose Philip Nicholls Tom Reid Tim Daly |
Guest Singers for Spem in Alium:
Soprano: Larissa Cairns, Sally Watt
Alto: Barbara Johnson, Melissa Lee
Tenor: Tim Bell, Adrian Palmer, Robert Parbs, Frank Prain
Baritone: Barney Ellis, Joel Gladman, Tom Henry, Grantley McDonald, Peter Neustupny, Julien Robinson, John Weretka
Bass: Matthew Champion, Nicholas Cowall, Steven Hodgson, Julian Liberto, Martin Strauss
REVIEWS
Monday, 30 May 2005, The Australian [Sydney], page 16.
Sacred songs set the spirit soaring
Martin Ball
THIS year marks 500 years since the birth of Thomas Tallis, the greatest English composer of the Tudor
period. To mark the anniversary, Ensemble Gombert presented a “Quincentennial Celebration” of Tallis
covering a range of his sacred music for unaccompanied choir: from the simple four-part anthem If ye love me, keep my commandments, to the majestic 40-part motet, Spem in alium.
Ensemble Gombert is the perfect group to give such a concert. Formed in 1990 by respected organist and scholar John O’Donnell, the 20-member ensemble specialises not just in the music of the 16th century, but also in the details of period-performance practice.
The most significant aspect of this is intonation, with their preference for mean over equal temperament. But it also expresses itself in an emphasis on purity of tone rather than expressive colour or interpretation. At times one could imagine more vigour in performance, but this conservative rationale keeps the focus firmly on the music, rather than on the performers.
The program began with a setting of Psalm 2, Why fumeth in sight, perhaps best known to contemporary
audiences as the basis of Vaughan-Williams’s Fantasy on a theme of Thomas Tallis. Ensemble Gombert immediately established a beautiful tone, with perfectly balanced weight of treble and bass. O’Donnell’s decision to cut short the penultimate phrase in each stanza added some energy to the reading, but might have been better executed with fewer hasty breaths. Gaude gloriosa is a long, laudatory hymn to the Virgin Mary, with a lot of work for individual voices. Here the stamina of some of the singers, soprano in particular, seemed to flag, and the ensemble sound varied considerably in tone and colour.
There were no such problems in the two settings of the Lamentations, however, where the exquisite tone and rhythm were perfectly matched to the melancholic text. Finally Ensemble Gombert was joined by a further 20 singers for the marvel that is Spem in alium. O’Donnell arranged the choir in a horseshoe shape, as Tallis apparently intended, so that the music travels around the ine of singers, and is thrown back and forth between them in the large tuttis. There was a tremendous sense of a rolling sea of music, as the voices echoed around the soaring cupola of Xavier College Chapel. This is music that is worth all the celebrating it can get, even 500 years later.
Tuesday, 31 May 2005, The Age [Melbourne], page 8, Metro.
Hunter-Bradley and Sky-Lucas bring Baroque to life
Clive O’Connell
TO CELEBRATE the possible 500th birthday of Thomas Tallis (born around 1505), the Ensemble Gombert
and director John O’Donnell presented A Quingentennial Celebration to a packed audience.
For the non-Tallis experts, O’Donnell and the Gomberts began easily with the setting of Psalm 2, Why
fumeth in sight, which Vaughan Williams employed for his famous Fantasia; the brief and always touching If ye love me; and some Latin settings showing the father of English choral music’s facility at pleasing both Catholic and Anglican heads of state.
The most substantial of these was Gaude gloriosa, a hymn of praise to the Virgin and also probably to Queen Mary I; a very substantial tribute for a lady about to cause havoc. As well, we heard the two Lamentations settings, which cast a long shadow over other settings, British-made or European.
Finally, the numbers were enlarged to perform the huge four-part motet Spem in alium, which is a mighty delight when everyone is in action, but which showed some creaking seams when the texture thinned out …
Clive O’Connell/Courtesy of The Age