Thomas Tallis

“Retrospectively the disc's final item, Ligeti's Luxaeterna, dominates the recital. Not only does it make an indelible impression, but it also casts its light over the entire programme and style of singing.
To a listener who has not heard it before (a slightly smaller category than might be thought, as the piece was used in the film 2001: A SpaceOdyssey) it may even come as the light on the road to Damascus, a blinding revelation of unknown choral sonorities. An extraordinary sound–world is opening up, with long, finely ruled streams of light, a spectrum of colours wide as the distance from heaven to earth, and all mingling eventually within the cavern of a great bell. The challenge to singers (even when assisted by the reverberance of Ely Cathedral's Lady Chapel) is formidable indeed, and these young voices (with lungs and ears involved also) do marvellously well. And so they do throughout. The quality of choral tone here is remarkable: no thready sopranos, none of those bone–dry basses, but a sound that, though strictly disciplined in the matter of vibrato, is still fresh and natural. They achieve wonders of crescendo, as in William Harris's Bring us, O LordGod, and their opening chords (in Tallis's O natalux for instance) are as if cut by the sharpest slicer ever made. Even so, this smooth, flawless beauty of sound is, in some contexts, like the modern beauty of the face of a heroine in some televised piece of period–drama. Josquin Desprez's Nuncdimittis is an example: the singing is extremely beautiful, but conceptually (and not just in the women's voices) seems anachronistic. It's as though they have worked on their programme with the precept 'All choral music aspires to the condition of Ligeti'. A wondrous record, all the same.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“The illuminating insert-notes place Mary's short reign within the bewilderingly stormy context of the 16th century with a calm understanding that enables the listener to see how this Latin music came to be written. Incidentally, the first piece was originally an English setting of Beatus vir. Sandon says it falls naturally into place with its Latin text. But the verses in the booklet don't exactly correspond to what's being sung, which raises an unnecessary question mark. Sandon's edition of the Proper Salisbury chants for the Third Mass of Christmas are performed between the polyphonic items. Meticulously researched, they serve as a foil to the sumptuous settings of the Ordinary.
If only they had been sung with more solemnity and gusto, omitting those irritating little bursts of volume on the high notes! All these chants would have sounded more authentic at a slower tempo with the occasional semi-metrical dactyl: as it is, they comes across rather as a poor relation beside the magnificence of Tallis's seven-part polyphony.
The polyphonic singing is exemplary, the clarity of the individual parts and the rhythmic interplay well under control. The singers enter into the spirit of the liturgical texts, in particular in the third section of the Agnus Dei. Their interpretation of the final motet, Gaude gloriosa, at times almost touches the visionary.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010