Reggio Emilia This evening’s eagerly awaited and certainly not ordinary concert (8.30 pm) at Valli Theatrewith “The Tallis Scholars”, one of the most prestigious vocal music groups in the world. The evening’s program is a dialogue between ancient and modern, between the voice of Hildegard von Bingen12th-century German composer, poet, Benedictine mystic, and the contemporary “sacred minimalism” of Estonian Arvo Pärt.
Nine centuries separate Hildegard and Pärt: Gregorio Allegri, who lived between 1582 and 1652, represents the chronological “bridge” between the two: Allegri who became immortal thanks to the famous Miserere (around 1630).
In this concert, the thread is singing and ways of interpreting spirituality in music: Hildegard, self-taught, is inspired by Gregorian monody: in the Miserere Gregorian chant alternates with polyphony; in Pärt the “tintinnabuli” reinterprets tradition through a language that is as essential as it is expressively powerful.
Founded in 1973 by their director Peter Phillips, The Tallis Scholars through their recordings and concerts have quickly established themselves and imposed themselves on audiences around the world. In fact, it is thanks to the careful work on intonation and the timbral fusion of the voices that Peter Phillips tried to create an absolute purity and clarity of sound, which soon became the stylistic feature that characterizes the ensemble.
Tallis Scholars perform around 70 concerts a year in major halls, churches, festivals and theaters in Europe, the United States, Australia and Japan. In April 1994 The Tallis Scholars sang to inaugurate Michelangelo’s restored frescoes in the Sistine Chapel and a few months earlier they celebrated the fourth centenary of Palestrina’s death with a concert in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, where Palestrina had been maestro of chapel. In December 1998 they celebrated their thousandth concert in New York. In the same year they performed in Italy (in Ferrara, at the invitation of Claudio Abbado) and in London in the National Gallery, in a special concert on the occasion of their twenty-fifth anniversary, performing the world premiere of a work composed for them by John Tavener and narrated by Sting, and subsequently, in 2000 in New York, with Paul McCartney.
Many of their recordings have received prestigious awards, including “Record of the Year” from Gramophone magazine and two “Diapason d’or de l’année”. It is worth mentioning, among the latest concerts in Italy, those held in magnificent places such as the Cathedral of Florence, the Cathedral of Siena, the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi, San Vitale and Sant’Apollinare in Ravenna and the Basilica of San Marco in Venice .
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