Collaboration with The Tallis Scholars
Sydney Chamber Choir participated in a rare collaboration with the Tallis Scholars in a concert on February 10th 2007, in City Recital Hall, Angel Place. The two choirs combined to perform Thomas Tallis’ magnificent 40 part motet Spem in Alium.
Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter McCallum remarked that: “The tour de force of the visit was Thomas Tallis’s magnificent motet for 40 separate parts, Spem in Alium, for which the 10 singers of the Tallis Scholars were joined by 35 from the Sydney Chamber Choir (making 45 singers in all: I admit to being unable to detect which parts were doubled up). The difficulty in assembling the necessary expertise makes performances scarce and hearing such well-matched, and well-balanced voices was a rare privilege.”
Earlier in the concert, Sydney Chamber Choir also performed three movements of Ross Edwards’ Ab Estatis Foribus, and Lux Aeterna by the choir’s Musical Director Paul Stanhope. Peter McCallum wrote: “Sydney Chamber Choir had earlier given lively buoyancy to motets by Ross Edwards and radiant dissonance to conductor Paul Stanhope’s accomplished score, Lux aeterna.”
About the Tallis Scholars: The Tallis Scholars were founded in 1973 by their director, Peter Phillips. Through their recordings and concert performances, they have established themselves as the leading exponents of Renaissance sacred music throughout the world. Peter Phillips has worked with the ensemble to create, through good tuning and blend, the purity and clarity of sound which he feels best serve the Renaissance repertoire, allowing every detail of the musical lines to be heard. It is the resulting beauty of sound for which the Tallis Scholars have become so widely renowned.