A Wondrous Work John Taverner's Missa Corona spinea - impresses RODERIC DUNNETT '... a magnificent addition to the wide-ranging Gimell repertoire ...'

The Tallis Scholars quickly acquired a high profile in the mid 1970s, when Peter Phillips founded them, and they were soon established as the master interpreters of Tudor music especially. It is gratifying that their profile is now as high as ever, although in the interval they have on their own label Gimell, produced by Phillips with his ever reliable recording colleague Steve Smith, unleashed some absolutely wonderful items, from Ockeghem and Clemens non Papa through to Arvo Pärt's Tintinnabuli pieces and an enchanting, delicate profile of John Tavener.

Here the Tavener acquires an 'r', for John Taverner (c1490-1545) is one of the major figures on Phillips' shopping list, which embraces rarer masters like the expressive earlier figure John Browne and the polyphonic masters William Cornysh and Robert White, and again reaches across the water to Gesualdo; Cardoso, Lobo and Morales; Gombert; and Jean Mouton, one of their most notable recent successes. They have already recorded Taverner's Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas (issued by Gimell in 2013 to celebrate the Tallis Scholars' fortieth anniversary), and before that the secular-founded Western Wind mass...

JOHN TAVERNER

OXFORD

ENGLAND

CHORAL MUSIC