★★★★½ Renaissance masters make sublime and welcome return to Oz.

City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney
November 5, 2016

Last time the Tallis Scholars came to town, a last minute change of venue to St. Mary’s Cathedral bathed us in beauty of tone but deprived us of the pleasure of aurally unravelling those intricate polyphonic textures. No fear of that this time. The perfect acoustics of City Recital Hall couldn’t have suited the legendary purity of this extraordinary vocal ensemble better. With nowhere to bury a misplaced consonant or mask an intonational glitch, only a world class choir such as this could have offered not one but two concerts of flawless singing in the space of just five hours.

It’s fascinating to compare the Scholars with another great British choir who visited these shores in recent years, The Sixteen. Harry Christophers seems to consider each work an act of worship, digging deep into word and message. Peter Phillips tends to favour line over text, each of his ten, true voices clear and free of any trace of grit or wobble. Where The Sixteen lunge at the words, wrapping themselves in the earthly drama, the Tallis Scholars sway and float with...