BARGAIN OF THE MONTH
The Victoria Collection
CD 1
Tomás Luis de VICTORIA (1548-1611)
Taedet animam meam** [3:19]
Requiem** [35:21]
Versa est in luctum** [3:40]
Alonso LOBO (1555-1617)
Versa est in luctum** [4:37]
CD 2
Tomás Luis de VICTORIA
Lamentations of Jeremiah*
Lamentations for Maundy Thursday [18:21]
Lamentations for Good Friday [14:27]
Lamentations for Holy Saturday [19:30]
Juan Gutiérrez de PADILLA (c. 1590-1664)
Lamentations for Maundy Thursday* [11:48]
CD 3
Tomás Luis de VICTORIA
Tenebrae Responses [66:00]
The Tallis Scholars/Peter Phillips
rec. **Church of St. John, Hackney, London; *Chapel of Merton College, Oxford.
No recording dates given
Latin texts and English, French & German translations included
GIMELL GIMBX304 [3 CDs: 46:52 + 64:08 + 66:00]
Hot on the heels of the three very generously filled boxes of discs issued
last year to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the label (see reviews of Vol.
1, Vol.
2. Vol.
3) Gimell have now gathered together in another box three key albums of
music by the Spanish master, Tomás Luis de Victoria. This marks the four-hundredth
anniversary of his death.
The second disc in this new box, containing Victoria’s Lamentations, is a
very recent recording. It was issued only last year, also as part of the Gimell
thirtieth anniversary celebrations, and when I reviewed
it I was very enthusiastic about it. As I commented then, ‘Victoria’s music
is wonderfully intense, very affecting and expressive. It’s also extremely
beautiful. Peter Phillips and his gifted singers perform them outstandingly
well, realising marvellously what Phillips refers to as the “plangent austerity”
of the music. As one listens everything sounds so natural and inevitable as
Victoria’s long phrases unfold. Technique such as this is the result of what
must have been painstaking preparation yet the performances never sound at
all studied.’ The Lamentations by Padilla are also well worth hearing, especially
in a performance as fine as this Tallis Scholars account.
There is now a lovely video,
posted on YouTube, in which you can watch The Tallis Scholars sing Victoria’s
First Lamentation for Maundy Thursday, atmospherically recorded in the dimly
lit Chapel of Merton College. This video performance complements the CD performances
very nicely.
The present recording of the Victoria Requiem was included in the first of
the three Gimell boxes, mentioned above. However, the version offered here
contains more music. When the recording was first issued in 1987 it included
the two motets, Taedet animam meam and Versa est in luctum.
These were excluded from the boxed set, presumably for reasons of space, but
they are restored here. Taedet animam meam, which is in four parts,
whereas the Requiem is for six voices, is a setting of the second lesson of
Matins for the Dead. It’s quite simple and makes a very apposite introduction
to the Requiem itself. The Requiem is informed by what Peter Phillips rightly
refers to in his booklet note as a ‘mystical intensity of expression’. Throughout
the performance The Tallis Scholars bring a wonderful sense of space and inevitability
to this music. Their singing has all the intensity that the music demands
but the intensity is never overdone: there’s always an enviable control. The
motet Versa est in luctum is inserted as the penultimate movement,
immediately before the final Responsory. Again, this feels absolutely right.
Victoria’s Requiem was written for the 1603 obsequies of the Dowager Empress
Maria, sister of King Philip II of Spain. It was for that monarch’s funeral
rites in 1598 that Lobo wrote his setting of Versa est in luctum and
it’s very interesting to have both his setting and that of Victoria on the
same disc. Lobo’s piece is by no means put in the shade - Phillips and his
singers ensure that it’s not. They give an arresting, fervent account of it,
one that demonstrates the expressive power that a few highly trained, expert
voices can produce.
Victoria’s Tenebrae Responses were published in 1585 in the same volume as
his Lamentations, the Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae. Thus, it’s very
valuable to have both compositions in the same collection. In brief, these
Responses were sung at the office of Tenebrae, which was celebrated on the
evenings before each of the three solemn days of the Triduum – Maundy Thursday,
Good Friday and Holy Saturday. In the booklet Peter Phillips describes the
rubric for these services. There are eighteen Responses, six for each Office.
Here they are sung with all their liturgical repeats, with soloists deployed
for the central versus sections of each piece.
In his notes Peter Phillips comments that in a recording such as this one
can listen to the pieces in three groups, one group for each Office, as they
were intended to be heard. That’s very true. But actually I think this recording
offers an additional opportunity. The Responses, as a collection, offer a
meditative overview of the essential elements of the whole Passion story,
from the betrayal in Gethsemane through to the Entombment of Christ. In just
over an hour of music Victoria takes the listener through the key stages of
the narrative and I found following the music in this way a very rewarding,
if ‘inauthentic’, process.
The music is astonishingly concise: only two of the eighteen settings last
for over five minutes in this performance. A moment ago I described the music
as a “meditative overview”. Don’t let that comment deceive you into thinking
this is a collection of quiet, prayerful pieces. On the contrary, at least
as presented here, there’s a great deal of vivid, dramatic music and The Tallis
Scholars project it powerfully. For example, sample the bite in the singing
of the words “cum gladibus et fustibus” (‘with swords and clubs’) in the sixth
Response, or again the anguish with which the singers impart, very rightly,
the words “Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti?” (‘My God, why have you forsaken
me?’) in the eighth Response. The entire set contains some magnificent and
deeply expressive music and it’s hard to imagine it could be better served
than is the case here.
Victoria is one of the great masters of polyphony and these performances,
recorded between the late 1980s and 2009, bring his music wonderfully to life.
The singing is amazingly consistent and accomplished, which is testament to
the exalted standards that Peter Phillips has set with The Tallis Scholars
right from the outset. Even if you have some of these recordings in your collection,
I’d urge you to take this opportunity to add the remainder by acquiring this
box. The set includes the booklets that accompanied each original release,
while the discs themselves are contained in sturdy and handsome cardboard
slipcases. As consistent as the quality of the singing is the quality of the
engineering. This collection of three excellent discs is, in fact, self-recommending.
John Quinn
A self-recommending collection of excellent recordings of music by one of
the great masters of polyphony.