A con­cert mini-review

The Tallis Schol­ars (dir. Peter Phillips)
St. Paul Church, Har­vard Square
Decem­ber 7, 2007

I chose this event for my annual dose of live clas­si­cal music pri­mar­ily for two rea­sons: One, they are named for one of my favorite com­posers, Thomas Tallis. Two, the series (the Boston Early Music Fes­ti­val) is spon­sored by my bank, the Cam­bridge Trust Com­pany, which has demon­strated excep­tion­ally good taste in choos­ing what to spon­sor. It doesn’t hurt that I secretly enjoy Renais­sance music, and the New York Times has called the Tallis Schol­ars “the rock stars of Renais­sance vocal music.”

Rock stars for a night, indeed they were. The audi­ence (by my esti­mates 99.5% white and at least 80% over the age of 40) prac­ti­cally gave them a stand­ing ova­tion for walk­ing onto the stage. And it was the first time I’ve ever seen a clas­si­cal group get cajoled into deliv­er­ing an encore. They met our expec­ta­tions though, with a set list by Lher­i­tier, Palest­rina, Mou­ton, Crec­quil­lon, Josquin Des Prez, and Jacobus Gal­lus. I had never heard of Gal­lus before—perhaps because he died in 1591—but the three pieces of his that they per­formed were my clear favorites of the evening. The encore (an unusual ver­sion of In dulce jubilo) was awesome.

The Schol­ars’ blend and tone was so per­fect that, as L. pointed out dur­ing the inter­mis­sion, it is easy to for­get that one is lis­ten­ing to peo­ple singing. The sound is sort of tran­scen­den­tal. Awesome.