Tenebrae bring their trademark passion and precision to this live performance of music by J. S. Bach and Sir James MacMillan, to be recorded live at Snape Maltings in May 2023. Renowned for their technical difficulty, Bach’s motets are pillars of the choral repertoire, requiring minute attention to detail as well as a full emotional range. Here, Tenebrae performs the three most well-known of the set, culminating in the joyful Singet dem Herrn. Like Bach, Sir James MacMillan has written much of his music for the church, and his settings of the Tenebrae responsories paint a vivid picture of the events of Holy Week. This album also features the premiere recording of I saw Eternity the other night, which MacMillan composed for Tenebrae in 2021 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the London Bach Society.
“It’s a monumental programme – a huge sing in terms of both brain and body. Short’s singers tackle it with all their signature precision. [MacMillan Responsories] explode in the ear: all translucent vertical clarity and balance. The flickering ornaments in “Tenebrae factae sunt” shoot like sparks around the choir, and the bladed purity of Short’s upper voices comes into its own in the gleaming exchanges of “Tradiderunt me”… There’s plenty to admire here” – Gramophone
10/10 “The vocal consort Tenebrae bring their trademark passion and precision to their performance recorded live at Snape Maltings…the sound quality is uniformly excellent…an illuminating and at times numinous listening experience” – Cross Rhythms
“This is an intriguing and delightful disc of music composed almost three hundred centuries apart by the Lutheran Johann Sebastian Bach and Catholic Sir James MacMillan… an extremely moving listen.” – RSCM