Music

Harmonia Mundi ✪✪✪✪

Album reviews, plus Ken Walton on Alpesh Chauhan, the new associate conductor of the SSO

Beginning and ending with a cappella motets in 40 parts, there are both curiosity and thrill factors to this new album by the ORA Singers under their director Suzi Digby. Choral aficionados will guess that one of these is Thomas Talllis’ 16th century masterpiece Spem in Alium .The other, specially commissioned as a reflection on the Tallis, is an equally luxuriant setting of the Easter text “Vidi aqua” by James Macmillan. To hear both together is to appreciate the inspiration Macmillan takes from Tallis and the original thought he freely applies. The newer piece is both a homage and a reimagining. Separating these are a collection of motets by Tallis contemporaries, the equally well-known William Byrd and lesser-known Derrick Gararde, Alfonso Ferrabosco and Philip van Wilder, all richly-served by ORA’S powerf performances. The recording comes with an illustrative documentary DVD.