Masters of Ávila: Vivanco, Victoria, Ribera

 

St Mary’s, Bourne Street.

SW1W 8JJ

 

Saturday 28 March 2026, 7.30pm

 

Conductor:  David Allinson

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Join us in celebrating a milestone in the choir’s history: the worldwide release of our recording on Toccata Classics of Vivanco’s Missa pro defunctis.

The setting for the Office for the Dead by Sebastián de Vivanco, remained unpublished by the time its composer died in 1622. Surviving in two incomplete manuscript versions which have been newly combined in a critical edition by Jorge Martín, we are the first choir to commit this powerful work to disc: it is taut, dramatic and expressive — well deserving its place in the canon of Iberian Requiem settings.

Shortly after this concert the choir will sing the Requiem in Ávila Cathedral, where Vivanco had his musical training, with Spanish chant choir Schola Antiqua. And so for this programme we supplement the Missa pro defunctis with music by Vivanco’s most celebrated near-contemporary, Tomás Luis de Victoria, and works by the man who taught both composers when they were choirboys at Ávila Cathedral: Bernardino de Ribera. Ribera’s music is stupendously good and shows us the foundations of his pupils’ craft.

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While the overall mood of the music is one of mourning and lamentation, there is lightness too, with brightly rapt motets for Mary — and the pleasure of expressing our gratitude to you, our audience and supporters, who helped bring this music to record for the first time.