The Tallis Scholars review – inspired pairing of Palestrina and Pärt brings shining warmth and clarity

The Guardian

31-03-2025

This year marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of Palestrina, the Italian composer who took the name of his native town, just east of Rome, now part of the metropolitan city. In director Peter Phillips's inspired pairing of Palestrina with the music of Arvo Pärt in the year of his 90th birthday, there was a particular frisson in knowing that in January, the Tallis Scholars had sung this very programme in the cathedral of Sant'Agapito Martire in Palestrina, where the young Giovanni Pierluigi may have been a chorister and was certainly organist from the age of 19.
Phillips has described Palestrina as the 'most consummate of renaissance composers': it may surely be said that the Tallis Scholars are the consummate vocal ensemble. Opening with his motet Surge Illuminare, the 10 Scholars immediately brought a shining warmth to the St George's auditorium, the clarity of the polyphonic lines as notable as their impeccable diction. This was followed by the Missa Brevis, only marginally shorter than the hundred plus others and exemplifying the infinite care with which Palestrina set the words of the Ordinary, the Scholars' use of dynamic and tonal colour, as well the attention to changes of metre, vividly achieved. After the Kyrie's gentle plea for mercy, the Gloria was indeed gloriously rich. Three solo voices – soprano, alto and tenor – brought a serene calm to the Benedictus, contrasting with the then full-bodied and joyous Hosanna, before the heartfelt plea for peace of the Agnus Dei.
Their singing of Pärt had the same implicit authority. His Da Pacem written in response to the terrorist bombings in Madrid in 2004 attuned the ear to his tintinnabuli style, transparent yet resonant. And presenting settings by both Palestrina and Pärt of the Nunc Dimittis, highlighting their expressivity and the common commitment to the meaning of the text, made for a symbolic connection.
Given the austere beauty of Pärt's music, so characteristic and unmistakable, the notion of his having fun with the music seems unlikely, but in the Scholars' rendering of Which Was the Son of … a litany of names tracing the lineage of Jesus, an almost mischievous playfulness emerged, with syncopations and the occasional feel of gospel-singing. By way of encore, a Pärt setting in his native Estonian added a final celebratory touch.