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All Reviews >>

wonderfully captured by the 16 mixed voices of the Tallis Scholars

05 March 2010
The Guardian
Andrew Clements

As Peter Phillips points out in his sleeve notes to his choir's beautifully understated recording of one of the greatest achievements of Spanish Golden Age polyphony, the expressive intensity driving Victoria's music makes it instantly identifiable in a way that the works of his predecessors and contemporaries never quite are. The music of Morales, Guerrero, Lobo or Padilla may be fluent and seraphically beautiful, but it never suggests the individuality of Victoria at his finest.

The Lamentations, nine settings of texts from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, were published in Rome in 1585, shortly before Victoria's return to Spain. They were designed to be sung on the three days leading up to Easter Sunday, the darkest period in the church calendar and the perfect liturgical context for Victoria's dramatic austerity. That quality is wonderfully captured by the 16 mixed voices of the Tallis Scholars, with their perfectly natural phrasing and carefully weighted tone; the recording, made in the chapel of Merton College, Oxford, has the same naturalness and rapt presence.

See the full review on the Guardian website.

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wonderfully captured by the 16 mixed voices of the Tallis Scholars