Nico Muhly: No Resting Place
The Tallis Scholars (Linn)
The Tallis Scholars and their founder-director Peter Phillips, steeped in the music of the Renaissance for five decades, took a while to realise they could work rewardingly with living composers. Far from tiring of their more familiar treasury – Byrd, Palestrina, Josquin and the like – here was a way to expand the possibilities of their lithe and crystalline sound. After two so-called holy minimalists, John Tavener (1944-2013) and Arvo Pärt (b1935), they found a match in the American Nico Muhly (b1981), who grew up singing early choral music. His first composition written for them, Recordare, Domine, is one of six works on this album. Prosperitie, a gift for Phillips’s 70th birthday party on a boat, rocks and churns jubilantly.
Rough Notes sets the last diary entry, with chilling ingenuity, of Captain Robert Falcon Scott before he froze to death in Antarctica in 1912. Never shy of embracing difficult subjects, Muhly first came to attention in the UK in 2011 with his opera Two Boys, a dark and prescient story of two teenage boys meeting online. His ambitious choral work No Resting Place (2022) intersperses verses from the biblical Lamentations of Jeremiah with comments from members of the Windrush generation. The writing, immediate, openly expressive, is full of rich harmonies and soaring lines.
The Windrush texts are sung by solo voices, setting them apart and intensifying their impact. Words are drawn from, among others, the late novelist Andrea Levy – remembering her father’s diaries after his arrival repeating the word “grey, grey, grey” – and the deputy prime minister, David Lammy, on the new arrivals’ loss of work, driving licences, identity. Muhly was recently appointed inaugural composer in residence at Christ Church, Oxford, as part of celebrations of the choir in its 500th year. A smart choice.
Prepare for the Proms
BBC Proms booking opens on 16 May: 86 concerts, from 17 July to 12 September. Be ready - these international stars will sell out quickly:
• Los Angeles Philharmonic, conductor Gustavo Dudamel, 11 and 12 August
• The Met Orchestra, conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, 26 and 27 August
• Berlin Philharmonic, conductor Kirill Petrenko, 2 and 3 September
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• Munich Philharmonic, conductor Lahav Shani, 5 September
• Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, conductor Simon Rattle, 7 September
Photograph by Hugo Glendinning