Comparison recordings of Spem in Alium:
Oxford
Camerata Naxos 5.110111 DVD-Audio/dts/AC-3
Peter
Phillips, The Tallis Scholars. Gimell 454 906-2
Richard
Westenberg, Musica Sacra Chorus, BMG/RCA Dolby Surround 09026-60970-2
As you can see, this fourteen
minute disk with eight minutes of music on it is a “single.”
In the six minute talk these eight very capable musicians describe
how they make up eight choirs of five voices each, not by running
about on stage to make their entrances wherever they occur,
but by recording each part separately. They then allow the engineers
to arrange them in the pattern of a horseshoe, as they say the
original performance was conducted, beginning in the right front
speaker and then moving around the horseshoe behind the listener
to the left front speaker. Other quadraphonic performances move
around the front of the listener.
I have no idea what the
product will cost in the market-place, even if you get it free
it’s not worth the price. The problem is the resultant sound.
It is barely listenable on my small computer speakers in two
channel stereo but even there the artifacts of excessive knob
twiddling are unfortunately evident. There’s something very
unnatural about the sibilants, and the notes tend to scoop disagreeably
at times. The reverberant acoustic is at best unreal and at
worst a strident hash. I fear they recorded each of the separate
eight choir lines - transposed down a whole tone to fit the
music to the ranges of the singers - in a dead studio and then
expected the engineers to add artificial reverberation to the
resulting spatial up mixture. The actual vocal performances
were probably quite good, and the potential quality was very
high, but whatever promises were made, the engineers did not
deliver. The result is, at best, artificial sounding on two
channels. On four channels it is grotesque and unpleasant.
As a curiosity this disk
may become a collector’s item of some value in the passage of
time. But, if you really want a good recording of this work
any one of the ones listed above is more satisfactory.
Musica Sacra is a New York
group of considerable reputation; they rush through Spem
in alium in under eight minutes. They avoid acoustical overload
in the cathedral of St. John the Divine by singing rather quietly
and with supporting lines dropping in volume behind solo lines.
Their recording released in Dolby Surround Sound does provide
sound sources throughout the listening space, although not with
the accuracy of the discrete 4.0 sound, however beautifully
they sing and however smooth and ambient the recording. Matrix
quad (such as AC-3, that is Dolby Surround) is like sex in that
it only works if you don’t try to figure it out. Even the recording
by The Tallis Scholars, who complete the work in just under
ten minutes and who sing with drama as well as sweetness, expands
satisfactorily in surround sound processing to fill the listening
space. Both these recordings avoid the ringing overload heard
on the Summerly recording. Heard under optimum circumstances,
these three recordings are different but are dead equals in
terms of overall beauty and commitment.
On any recording of the
music of Tallis, the inevitable question must be answered: No,
this disk does not contain the piece upon which Vaughan Williams
based his Tallis Fantasia. I know of no recording of
that work, and I had to find the score and make myself a MIDI
file in order to hear it played on my computer.
Paul Shoemaker
The
King’s Singers: David Hurley, Robin Tyson, Paul Phoenix, Philip Lawson,
Christopher Gabbitas, Stephen Connolly
[14.36]