To celebrate their 25th anniversary, sacred music specialists the Tallis Scholars re-released on their own Gimell label a disc that has been a cipher in their catalog for a long time, English Madrigals, recorded in 1982 for EMI's Classics for Pleasure imprint and unavailable for so long as to be virtually forgotten. It is heartening to see the list of singers active under Peter Philips' direction in that bygone era -- Emily van Evera, Margaret Philpot, Michael Chance, and Andrew King among them -- all names unknown in 1982 that have figured very prominently in the early music boom soon to follow. As the original Classics for Pleasure LP, though digitally recorded, ran short by twenty-first century standards, Gimell has expanded it through including the odd pieces used to fill out an early release, Tomkins: The Great Service. As one comes to expect from the Tallis Scholars in music of a more serious kind, the performances of the English Madrigals are terrific; in the notes, Philips states that their ultimate single-mindedness might have slackened somewhat "if there hadn't been so much first-rate sacred music to explore." |
