THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD November 2022 ★★★★½ "Surrounded in serene wonder: one of music's great experiences"
"One of music’s most remarkable experiences is to listen to Thomas Tallis’s 40-part motet, Spem in alium, from 'within', with the sounds of the eight five-part choirs coming from every direction, surrounding the listener in sonic fabric of serene wonder. This is usually reserved for the singers themselves but in the final concert of The Song Company’s 2022 season, Artistic Director Antony Pitts provided just such an immersive experience, placing the choirs in the arched stone galleries of St Mary’s Crypt around the audience so that whole space seemed to resonate and hum. The program provided two chances to hear this famous but rarely heard piece.
Earlier, we had heard The Song Company and guests singing it from the centre with the audience placed around, so as to capture the intricate density of its complexly woven texture. The remainder of the program paired music by Australian and Spanish composers and another Tallis motet, with the three surviving movements of another Tallis masterpiece, the seven-part Missa Puer natus est nobis... the range is low and rich, an emphasis captured beautifully by The Song Company at the start of the Benedictus where velvety alto and lower parts created a sense of warm inner reverence. The Mass is built on an esoteric rhythmic structure and elsewhere The Song Company under Pitts realised the full seven-part textures as gloriously complex abstractions.
The program began with Psalm 33 by Australian composer David Yardley, which alternated chant sections with fuller choral sections in an effective prelude to the Tallis. Brooke Shelley’s Tanquam sydus matutinum expanded from single voices to rich harmonies for full choir settling on still sustained notes in the top parts with quiet activity below. Antony Pitts’s In Paradisum began with weighty glowing textures in low range, opening out to iridescent still chords, holding the soprano line like a beam of light as the textures mutated towards the cadence. Pitts departs The Song Company at the end of 2022 after leading choral projects of wide-ranging imagination, intelligence and stylistic richness. His particular affinity with Tallis’s masterwork was heard earlier in his tenure... the companion work he wrote for it, XL. This program was a fitting testament to the creative enrichment he has brought to The Song Company and to Sydney’s musical life." (Peter McCallum)
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LIMELIGHT November 2022 ★★★★ "The Song Company delivers superb performances all round in this expert interpretation of Renaissance polyphony and related modern works."
"The Song Company's Fullness of Joy program begins and ends with the genius of Thomas Tallis. Embraced by this arc are early choral works reflecting an Iberian aesthetic and, maintaining the continuum with the present, there are three compositions by living composers, performed in the presence of the writers. The artists of The Song Company along with The SongCo Apprentices and The SongCo Chorale, are conducted by Antony Pitts in his last concert as their Artistic Director after a productive seven-year tenure. Underscoring the theme of the performance is Psalm 33 – Ye just men, have fullie joye in the Lord, a song of exultation by David Yardley, who has set the text attributed to John Wycliffe in neo-medieval style. The ensemble makes full use of the floor and gallery of the auditorium, creating an immersive quadrophonic effect, which is not only horizontal but vertical as well... The verses, sung by the light but athletic soprano line, are supported by the lower voices, separated by sonorous bass plainchant, making a very appealing piece... Tallis’s Christmas mass, Missa Puer natus est nobis... In this festive mass, the ensemble creates a luxuriant sound, the soprano voices rising above the lower parts which move stepwise in typical slowly shifting harmonies under melodies elaborated by upwardly moving passing notes. The ensemble adds interest leaning on notes flattened and sharpened creating tension and resolution and enhance the impact of the evocative text. The movements of Tallis’s mass are spliced with his Suscipe quaeso Domine and another bracket, comprising Brooke Shelley’s Tanquam sydus matutinum and Panis angelicus by Tallis’s Portuguese contemporary, João Lourenço Rebelo, another sumptuous piece of polyphonic writing. Tanquam sydus matutinum by Sydney composer Brooke Shelley is inspired by the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Also written for two SATB choirs, a tenor chant is anchored by a bass pedal point, followed by alto and the soprano entries until the soprano holds a pedal point as the voices enter in reverse order. There are interesting cross rhythms conveying a dance-like feel, with the piece closing in the suspended ending of a hypnotic reverie. Antony Pitts’s 'In Paradisum' from Requiem for the Time of the End gives us a different view of paradise, dissonant and grounded in the lower voices. The plainchant fragment Puer natus est nobis et Filius datus est nobis allow the choirs to get into place for the second iteration of Spem in alium, a demanding but inspirational work... at various points the choirs come together at various crucial points, affirming their unity of purpose, this ensemble creating moments of absolute radiance at these points of unanimity... superb performances from all in this expert interpretation of Renaissance polyphony and related modern works." (Shamistha de Soysa)
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