*** For over twenty years now, the Tallis Scholars have been acclaimed as the leading exponents of Renaissance sacred music and hailed as the `superstars of a capella'.

Founded in 1973 -- and still directed by the remarkable Peter Phillips -- the Singers, drawn from choral scholars from Oxford and Cambridge chapel choirs, not only established a reputation for musical excellence but, perhaps more surprisingly, managed through their concerts and award-winning recordings, to reach a huge, world-wide audience.

Phillips, who has dedicated his entire musical career to Renaissance sacred music has, almost single-handedly, resurrected the church music of that `golden age', which formed an intrinsic part of the great flowering of learning, science and the arts across Europe.

While the compositions sung by the Tallis Scholars would originally have included boy sopranos, the director has substituted mature female sopranos who nevertheless produce a gloriously pure tone. Besides the two sopranos, he uses two altos, four tenors and two basses: the resulting perfect blend of tone is almost sublime in effect.

Appropinquet deprecatio mea was written by Robert White, who probably served as master of Westminster Abbey's choristers in the mid-16th century. Now recognised as one of the greatest English composers of the period, White's composition, set to verses from Psalm 119, provided a vocally dramatic introduction to the programme, in which the sheer beauty of these voices, soaring, hovering and sustaining the rich melodic lines was overwhelming in effect.

William Byrd, who with his contemporary, Thomas Tallis, are often referred to as the `fathers' of English music, was a Catholic who had to tread a musical tightrope in a newly Anglican country. His Mass for Five Voices , sung in Latin, commences with the Kyrie and progresses through the spirited brightness of the Gloria, the exquisite fluidity of the Credo, followed by the contrapuntal beauty of the Benedictus and the climactically powerful Agnus Dei.

Two more of Byrd's works were included in the programme; the Plorans ploravit is a motet and, with its theme of the prevailing plight of the Catholic minority, is understandably lugubrious in tone. Similarly, his Tribulaatio proxima est echoes the same sense of mournful desolation. Both were sung with restrained and impressively modulated power.

Italian composer Alfonso Ferrabosco, who for around 18 years, was in the service of Elizabeth I, was represented by the haunting Lamentations , written for Holy Week, and his Mirabile mysterium which, as the title indicates, suggested the arcane and the mystical.

Having begun with White, the programme also ended with this composer, this time with a performance of his exquisite Manus tuas fecerunt me , set for eight paired voices, in yet another setting of Psalm 119. Both melancholy and dramatic in theme, this last work provided the perfect vehicle for these perfect voices, as they explored the very limits of the demanding technical requirements of homophony and counterpoint inherent in White's compositions.

There can be no doubt that the acoustics of City Hall do not in any way compare -- particularly with this kind of music -- with St. John's Church where this incomparable choir previously performed for the Festival. Under the inspired and rather endearingly intimate conducting of Peter Phillips, however, this was, by any standards, an evening of musical greatness.

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