Search - The Tallis Scholars: Live In Rome on DVD

Beautiful music, worth buying, disappointing editing.

Chris | Bay Area, CA | 12/16/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I love the Tallis Scholars, and have seen them live a few times. The most fascinating thing for me is to see how the beautiful sounds are created with nothing but the voices of a small number of people. In the live concerts, my seats were far back, so I was not able to see the faces of the performers doing their magic, and that's why I bought this DVD - I wanted to see the faces up close.

The performance is wonderful; the Sanctus and Agnus Dei from the Missa Papae Marcelli are close to the best I've ever heard, and the performance of Allegri's Miserere is outstanding.

The production is, however, frustrating to me. I don't think the editors (or the camera people) appreciated the underlying music they were working with. At any given moment, the music may feature a soaring, beautiful voice taking the lead, but the image will be of Peter Phillips (the 'director' of the performers) 'conducting' (a useful image once in a while). At other times, the image will be giving us a closeup of someone who's voice at that moment is contibuting to the background, while someone else off-camera is producing a heavenly sound.

Please, show us the source of the awesome voice! This seems to happen over and over.

This DVD also uses 'angles' very cleverly to give you two 'versions' of the music - one version shows the performers (not ideally, as described above), while the other version shows the artwork in the stunningly beautiful church. The problem with this, for me, is that both of my DVD players insist on showing an 'angle' overlay on the screen; this is a bug in the two DVD playerss, but since so few DVDs use multiple angles, bugs like this are not found and fixed by the DVD player manufacturers. Philips refuse to fix this bug in my player. I worked around this by using a DVD backup utility to create a 'single angle' version, which was a pain to do.

"

BREATHTAKINGLY BEAUTIFUL VISUALS

Timothy C. Wingate | Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA | 03/01/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This was a very special occasion as it celebrated the 400th anniversary of Palestrina's death. It was recorded in 1994 at one of Rome largest churches - Santa Maria Maggiore (Saint Mary Major). Next to St. Peter's and St. John Lateran (the pope's homes church as "Bishop of Rome") this is a basilica replete with gilt and glitter and a plethora of art works.

I disagree with the other reviewer who complained that there were not close-ups every time one of the "scholars" had a solo. This would have been distracting and I think the director did a great job.

The Allegri Miserere with soloist Deborah Roberts was interesting in that Peter Phillips dispersed his group about the basilica so that it had an antiphonal sound and look. I am not sure that this was done when originally performed only in the Sistine Chapel but it is most effective here. We all remember Roy Goodman's classic interpretation many years ago before his voice changed and now he has developed into a conductor of considerable merit.

You have the option to play the disk without the visuals because they are so gorgeous that they can be distracting if you are not concentrating completely on the total experience of this outstanding DVD.

The blurb one the back quotes reviews from The Tablet, Classic CD, and The Independent and I cannot better some of their words: "staggeringly beautiful video", "Moving 400th anniversay tribute", and "You don't get much closer to heaven".

Highly recommended for all aficianados of a capella vocals and the inimitable Tallis Scholars under Peter Phillips. There are also performances recorded at Merton College Chapel, Oxford and Salle Church in Norfolk.

Altogether a packed DVD and essential to any collection.

Timothy Wingate Ottawa Canada"