Rehearsal in Florence Cathedral

This photograph was taken in Florence Cathedral by Raffaele Puccianti on the 30th September 2009. It shows my rear view as I conduct the Tallis Scholars, intermingled with the students collected by Raffaele and Paolo Ramacciotti for some intensive study of renaissance music. This concert was the grand finale, attended by a thousand people.

Singing or conducting?

This article will appear in the Spectator magazine dated October 17th

Someone somewhere recently asked me in a public forum whether I would prefer to be a singer, the conductor or a member of the audience at the concerts we give. He himself was of the opinion that he would rather be a singer, saying that the music we do is so complicated that only someone on the inside of it can appreciate exactly what the composer has achieved. If he’s right, the audience don’t stand a chance.

I rushed to my own defence, saying that the guy out front has the best of all worlds, as one would expect if he is to control the performance. He is receiving the sound without distortion, so placed that the voices will come to him equally strongly. With this immediacy he can draw out and shape the phrases, which is both a privilege and a pleasure with music of such quality. In fact I have always opted to stand as close to the singers as possible, believing that only when I can virtually touch them will I have real control over the ensemble. When there is some impediment to this – a microphone or some steps or a piece of furniture in a church – and I am obliged to stand back, I never feel so confident about the end result.

The 2010 Composers Award – press release

The National Centre for Early Music is delighted to announce the 2010 NCEM Composers Award in which they continue to develop their successful partnership with BBC Radio 3 and the internationally acclaimed vocal ensemble The Tallis Scholars. This major national award is open to composers up to the age of 25, divided into two age categories: 18 and under, and 19 to 25.

The 2010 NCEM Composers Award invites young composers to compose a new a cappella (unaccompanied) piece for Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass.  The Award will be judged by Peter Phillips, Director of The Tallis Scholars; Chris Wines, Senior Music Producer BBC Radio 3 and Delma Tomlin, Director of the NCEM. The winners’ pieces will be premiered by The Tallis Scholars in Chester Cathedral as part of the 2010 Chester Summer Music Festival. BBC Radio 3 will record and broadcast highlights of this concert.

New Tallis Scholars facebook page(s) – for fans everywhere

I am pleased to announce the creation of a Tallis Scholars facebook page for supporters the world over. Although it is very young, this page already includes news about our records, concert programmes and Summer Courses (TSSS). You will probably know better than me how to sign on to it, but www.facebook.com seems to be a good start. And then you can try to guess the identity of Thomas Tallis himself, who has joined as a fan. I hold this to be praise indeed. But please sign on yourself, and encourage your polyphonic friends to do the same.

Stuffed chicken breast

This is a wonderful recipe for stuffed chicken, which was sent to me by Annamaria and Andrea Angelini. They served it to me, and to my friends and colleagues Ghislaine Morgan, Diane Pereira and Sarah Hilditch, on Monday 31st August 2009, during the most recent Rimini choral course. I will translate the Italian when I have a moment. Meanwhile please admire the photographs and maybe even cook from them:

Foto n° 1: Un petto di pollo aperto a metà, non tagliato, e
un po’ schiacciato

Phillips family annual photograph

Every year since we moved into 22 Gibson Square in August 1994 we have had a photograph taken in August to mark the passing of the years. This is the latest in the series – the 16th. From left to right you see: Caroline Trevor, Edmund Phillips, Peter Phillips, Harriet Pilcher and Lucy Pilcher.

Phillips on Cardus

The following book review will appear in the autumn issue of the Musical Times.

Cardus – Celebrant of Beauty  A Memoir by Robin Daniels

The Elusive Mr Cardus  Letters and Other writings edited by Bob Hilton

Neville Cardus has been a hero for many people for a long time now. From his deprived upbringing in the back streets of Manchester (his aunt was a prostitute); to his way with words which, Palestrina-like, seemed to be in an idiom perfectly formed from birth; to his two intriguingly contrasted yet somehow mutually supporting areas of expertise, he fascinated his contemporaries and continues to dazzle the likes of me, who once, in the pages of the Spectator in 1989, tried to write both the music and cricket columns in conscious emulation. There never was a shortage of people to pay him homage, and here, in Robin Daniels’ memoir, must be the last word in this hero worship. One can only hope so.

What was it about Neville which was so impressive? Whatever it was seemed to work for him from an early age since the Manchester Guardian, under the editorship of C.P.Scott (the All-Father as Cardus later called him), most uncharacteristically took a punt on someone who was just 28 and almost completely untried. I suspect it was a combination of the most intense underlying seriousness of purpose, a ready wit, and no obvious interest in wordly possessions. He disarmed people from the first meeting, and backed up the good impression with prose which in itself could seduce. Michael Kennedy put it best: ‘He had a flair for the telling phrase which caught the fleeting moment and gave it permanence’. And the fact that he could do this in the world of classical music and opera – a world every educated person aspired to – as well as with a mere sport – as his musical friends would put it – meant that he had an appeal across two borders. It was typical of his adroitness that in his hands they could seem linked, each giving perspective to the other. It also meant he could be photographed with desirable international stars like Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer, as well as with national icons like Jack Hobbs. It was a unique double-act.

Tallis Scholars on BBC Radio 3

Part of the concert we gave in York Minster recently will be broadcast on the Early Music Show (BBC Radio Three) on Sunday July 19th at 1.00pm. The programme will consist of interviews with me and Delma Tomlin, hosted by Kate Bott, and the performance of all of Taverners’ Missa Corona spinea (if time allows) and the two pieces which won our new composition competition. The Taverner – a rare and unusually difficult piece to sing in concert, and ideally suited to the spaciousness of the Minster – is a must for all lovers of polyphony (and/or the Tallis Scholars). The two modern pieces were wonderful, too. If you miss the actual broadcast you can always find it again on the replay facility of the BBC website, for a week afterwards.

Music for spaces?

This weekend I shall be conducting the winning entries in a new composition competition, to be broadcast at a future date on BBC Radio Three’s Early Music Show, from York Minster. Why it is thought appropriate to air the works of a 16- and 23-year-old on this particular show beats me, except that they will be sung by the Tallis Scholars and are written for unaccompanied voices. Still, whatever the forum, I am glad the competition is receiving this kind of exposure since the original entries, from all over the country, were of an encouragingly high quality. Who would have guessed that there were so many promising composers hidden away in the much-derided music departments of our schools? Nor were they all from private schools.

Moving on

In the current anniversary-fest the musical world has awarded itself there is an omission which dwarfs the lot of them. This is the invention of what many people still call ‘modern music’. For it was in 1909 that Schoenberg wrote his Five Orchestral Pieces and the monodrama Erwartung. These were early atonal works which used such a fantastic variety of harmony, rhythm, and colour, and took place at such an intense emotional level, that they first justified the use of the term ‘expressionist’. Roger Fry had just coined this term, also in 1909, in order to establish a contrast with the passivity of Impressionism.