What better way to ring in the New Year than to reacquaint one's self with Tallis's magnum opus, the 40-part motet Spem in alium!? The work -- for eight 5-voice choirs -- is rarely done for a variety of reasons, notably that each part is quite demanding and it requires an absolute minimum of forty strong singers who can hold their own while 39 other parts are being sung.

While the work has been recorded a number of times (cf. the CCM from July 2004), this classic performance by the group which takes Tallis as its namesake is arguably the most impressive. One of the great joys of listening to this work, besides trying to wrap one's brain around it all!, is relishing how Tallis effortlessly and organically shifts the texture around. Huge swaths of polyphony are met with homophonic interjections, the occasional solo part comes in to introduce a new idea or do a "clean-up job" on the preceding tapestry of dense sound, etc.