The Sixteen's first Choral Pilgrimage was a millennium celebration, aiming to bring English choral music back to the cathedrals to which it belongs. Eight years on, it is clear that the tradition they have established is a cause for pilgrimage in itself. Their singing is vibrant affirmation both of the repertoire and of the Sixteen's supremacy in the field.
It is testimony enough that their 2008 pilgrimage can present three virtually unknown composers: Christopher Tye, Robert Parsons and Robert White. Their finest works are, as the title of this year's series has it, Treasures of Tudor England. The clear parallel between ecclesiastical architecture and the elegant intricacies of musical structure is one strand in the Sixteen's advocacy of these composers. Yet what strikes the listener with most force is the emotional quality of the music, reflecting in turn the religious turbulence that conditioned Tudor church music.
The serenity of Robert Parsons' Ave Maria and the blissful conviction of its final Amen set the parameters of this recital, but it then served to underline the dissonances which give the work of Robert White its expressive urgency. In White's Lamentations, where each verse is prefaced by a letter of the Hebrew alphabet and set in a gently swirling elaboration, conductor Harry Christophers ensured that the contrast between chordal and contrapuntal writing never impeded a flowing momentum. In Parsons' O Bone Jesu and again in Tye's Peccavimus Cum Patribus Nostris, Christophers elicited a glowing intensity. But it was White's Christe Qui Lux Es et Dies and its juxtaposition of plainchant with complex interleaving of voices which created an indelible impression. The legacy of medieval and renaissance art resonating today in a church once destroyed by bombing had its own peculiar power.
· At St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury, April 10. Box office: 01743 233873. Then touring.
