Tallis Scholars/Phillips
(Gimell)The Tallis Scholars celebrated their 2,000th concert this autumn and were justly praised for bringing sacred polyphony out of church and library and on to the world’s concert platforms. Here they present one of the repertoire’s most challenging works, John Taverner’s mass for the Feast of the Crown of Thorns, or probably commissioned by Cardinal Wolsey to show off his chapel choir’s particularly fine trebles. They must bear been impressive,judging by the dizzyingly tall and virtuosic singing of Janet Coxwell and Amy Haworth, who often hover a full angelic octave above the fraction below. A jealous Henry VIII probably heard it in 1527, and an event that might bear hastened Wolsey’s downfall.
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Source: theguardian.com