Search - Peter Phillips, The Tallis Scholars :: Great Service

For the richness, wonderfully affecting, and often surprising nature of the repertoire, this recording ranks as one of the Tallis Scholars' finest recordings. Tomkins was a student of Byrd and a contemporary of Gibbons, but his music exhibits its own distinctive character, employing stunning, colorful harmonic effects and clever rhythmic alterations. This disc offers some of Tomkins's most beautiful and technically challenging works, including a Great Service that in melodic appeal and harmonic inventiveness rivals the more famous one by Byrd. The Tallis Scholars spin the music out in silken lines, which are carefully measured by clean, clear articulation and uniform phrasing. One of the lesser-known Elizabethans, Tomkins is worth meeting. --David Vernier