MONTEVERDI: Laudate, pueri, Dominum, SV 196
PALESTRINA: Missa pro defunctis
MONTEVERDI: Messa a quattro voci da cappella
PALESTRINA: Peccantem me quotidie; Jubilate Deo
At 6:00 pm, before the Tallis Scholars concert, Dr Giacomo Pirani will meet the audience for an introduction to the music of Monteverdi.
The Tallis Scholars were founded in 1973 by their director, Peter Phillips. Through their recordings and live performances, they have established themselves worldwide as leading exponents of Renaissance sacred music. Peter Phillips has worked with the ensemble to create the purity and clarity of sound that he believes best suit the Renaissance repertoire. It is precisely the beauty of this distinctive sound that has made the Tallis Scholars so renowned.
In 2023/24, as they celebrated their 50th anniversary, the demand to hear the ensemble around the world was stronger than ever.
Highlights of the 2025/26 season include performances in Japan, the United States and East Asia, a series of appearances in London, their debut at the Venice Biennale Musica, as well as their regular programme of tours throughout Europe and the United Kingdom.
In Italy, the Tallis Scholars are regular guests at major concert halls and festivals. They have performed, among other venues, at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Florence Cathedral, and in Siena, Monreale and Milan, as well as in all the major basilicas of Ravenna and the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi.
The Tallis Scholars’ recordings have received numerous awards worldwide. Their 2020 release, which included the Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae, was the final instalment in a nine-album project to record and release all of Josquin’s Masses ahead of the 500th anniversary of the composer’s death. It won BBC Music Magazine’s prestigious Recording of the Year award in 2021, as well as the 2021 Gramophone Early Music Award.
In 2026, the ensemble released its first recording for Linn Records, featuring a selection of works written for the group by American composer Nico Muhly. The album received widespread acclaim, including being selected as Gramophone magazine’s Editor’s Choice in April 2026.
Peter Phillips has devoted his career to the study and performance of Renaissance polyphony and to refining the art of choral sound. In 1973 he founded the Tallis Scholars, with whom he has given more than 2,750 concerts worldwide and made over 60 recordings in collaboration with Gimell Records. Through this work, Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars have contributed more than any other ensemble to establishing Renaissance sacred vocal music as one of the great repertoires of Western classical music.
Peter Phillips also conducts other specialist ensembles. He currently works with the BBC Singers in London, the Netherlands Chamber Choir in Utrecht, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir in Tallinn, the Danish National Vocal Ensemble in Copenhagen and El León de Oro in Oviedo. He is Patron of the Choir of Merton College Chapel, Oxford.
Alongside his work as a conductor, Peter Phillips is also well known as a writer. For 33 years he wrote a regular music column for The Spectator. In 1995, he became editor of The Musical Times, the world’s oldest continuously published music journal. His first book, English Sacred Music 1549-1649, was published by Gimell in 1991, while his second, What We Really Do, appeared in 2013. In 2018, BBC Radio 3 broadcast his view of Renaissance polyphony in a six-part series of one-hour programmes entitled The Glory of Polyphony.
In 2005, Peter Phillips was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture. In 2008, he helped establish the Choir of Merton College Chapel, Oxford, where he is a Bodley Fellow. In 2021, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford.
Photo © Hugo Glendinning
