Presto Recordings of the Year
Finalist 2023

The Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips

Sheppard, J: Cantate Mass
Sheppard, J: Laudem dicite
Sheppard, J: Jesu salvator saeculi, redemptis
Sheppard, J: Martyr Dei qui unicum
Sheppard, J: Gaude gaude gaude Maria
Sheppard, J: Beata nobis gaudia
Sheppard, J: Gaude virgo Christiphera

Recorded to celebrate The Tallis Scholars' 50th Anniversary, John Sheppard's exuberant Missa Cantate is an ideal work to highlight their pioneering achievements. The Tallis Scholars first album of music by John Sheppard, released in 1989, created a new icon of English Renaissance polyphony - Media vita. Their second Sheppard album may well do the same for his only Votive Antiphon on a festal scale, Gaude virgo Christiphera.

"Sheppard (c1515-58) was certainly an ingenious and interesting composer as this revelatory recording amply demonstrates…[The Missa Cantate] is performed here with clarity, poise and excellent tuning…Especially effective is their performance of Laudam dicite; its f luid chordal language suits them and they make the most of its astonishing harmonic false relations in the ‘Amen’ section." - BBC Music Magazine, December 2023.