Vivanco’s ‘lost’ Requiem: Conductor David Allinson on unearthing new treasures from the Spanish Golden Age

David Allinson and The Renaissance Singers at Holy Sepulchre London,

The Renaissance Singers is a chamber choir with a difference. One of London’s leading non-professional vocal groups, for over 80 years it has specialised in original programmes of early vocal music that include overlooked masterpieces and many first modern performances.

Their new CD, made possible by their supporters on Crowdfunder, is of a Requiem by Sebastián de Vivanco that has not been recorded before.

The choir’s Musical Director David Allinson tells us more.

Whose Requiem is it anyway?

Imagine this. You’ve taken your seat in the concert hall for a performance of a Requiem: Verdi perhaps, Brahms, or maybe Fauré. But the conductor turns to the audience with an announcement. Apparently, this piece exists in different versions, and it’s unclear which of them the composer wanted us to hear. The musicians will therefore perform parts of the work twice. 

If this scenario seems unlikely to you, it shows that you tend to think of most composers’ works as being fixed, made stable by a set of published musical symbols. We assume the music represents the composer's final thoughts at whatever point the clock was stopped – and usually within the composer’s lifetime.

In Renaissance music this isn’t always the case. The printing press did revolutionize the dissemination of vocal music throughout the period, and we are fortunate to have printed collections by many great composers. But much of what was sung in cathedrals then was transmitted in manuscript copies. It was the use and re-use of the music, not its written structures, that mattered: music would be adapted, rewritten or discarded in different locations to suit the particular circumstances of the institution and the choir. And sadly these manuscripts were easily damaged, lost or deliberately discarded.

For musicians today the result can be a blur, a musicological puzzle. How might we fit together the ‘work’ from the sources available? Should we even try to second-guess the composer’s intentions, or should we embrace the instability of multiple, open-ended solutions?

This explains how my choir, The Renaissance Singers, came to perform and record some movements of a Requiem twice.

Rediscovering a Requiem by a great composer

Connection beyond boundaries: a symphonic work inspired by Esoteric Buddhism, Symphony Kūkai to be performed by London Philharmonic Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall

Statue of 8th-century Japanese Master Kūkai

The 8th-century Japanese Master Kūkai journeyed across the sea to Tang-China to study Esoteric Buddhism under the revered monk, Master Huiguo. Returning to Japan in the year 806, he brought the essence of the Tang dynasty back to Japan, shaping the cultural foundation of the country - a lot of the social systems we associate with present day Japan initiated during this time and are a consequence of Kūkai.

A new work, the only large-scale symphonic work inspired by Esoteric Buddhism, intends to convey this in music. Composer Zou Ye's Symphony Kūkai is being presented at the Royal Festival Hall on 30 January 2026 in collaboration with Beijing Tianguzhiyin Culture Media Ltd. The conductor is Takuo Yuasa and the orchestra is being joined by the London Philharmonic Choir and Central Conservatory of Music Choir of China.

Master Kūkai

The work began as a film, commissioned by the Chinese entrepreneur Mr Yongde Yue. This was a documentary about Master Kūkai that had music by Zou Ye. Zou Ye (born 1957) is a Chinese modern classical and film music composer. He was from the first generation of musical composition graduates from the Wuhan Conservatory of Music (then named the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts), when such education resumed with the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Ye's music for the film was well received and when difficulties arose in getting a licence for the film in China, in order to not lose the music it was decided to create a separate work which became Symphony Kūkai. After performances of the work in Japan, the overwhelming feedback of the audience suggested that it was not just an ancient story. The message of the symphony was universal, and the creators were encouraged to think of taking the work to the rest of the world.

The performance at the Royal Festival Hall is a step up from the smaller scale performances of the work hitherto and will be aimed at a wider audience rather than simply the Chinese community. The performance on 30 January was designed to take place before Chinese New Year 2026 (17 February) and requires a significant amount of cooperation as the London Philharmonic Choir will be singing the work in Mandarin, which is a challenge for English-speaking singers.

Opera comes to Clapham Grand: The Merry Opera Company in Mozart's Cosi fan tutte

Built as The New Grand Theatre of Varieties in 1900 by a consortium of music-hall artistes, the Grand in Clapham has been through various vicissitudes including periods as a cinema and bingo hall, going dark for over ten years when it failed to become a pub, returning as a live music venue and club, now it is billed as a modern palace of variety.  

What it does not seem to have had is any performances of opera, until now!

As part of its 2026 tour, The Merry Opera Company will be presenting Mozart's Cosi fan tutte at The Clapham Grand on 18 February 2026. The tour opens at Blackheath Halls on 29 January and tours venues in the South East until 4 July.

Sung in Amanda Holden's English translation, the production is directed by John Ramster, with Elle Oldfield, Tilly Green, James Beddoe and Marcus Dawson as the lovers, Fleur de Bray as Despina and Matthew Quirk as Don Alfonso. The production is accompanied at the piano by music director Chad Vindin.

Further details from the Merry Opera website.

As we wish everyone a Happy New Year, it is a time to look back at 2025 and celebrate

Musgrave: Mary, Queen of Scots - Heidi Stober & cast in the Act One party scene - English National Opera, 2025 (Photo: Ellie Kurttz)

As we welcome in 2026, we take the opportunity to look back at the year gone by. 2025 saw us doing 500 articles on Planet Hugill from Tony Cooper celebrating New Year in Berlin to Robert J Carreras's final Letter from Florida of 2025 listening to Mahler's Symphony No. 4. In between there were over 60 opera reviews and over 60 concert reviews, with over 30 interviews from composer Steve Daverson on a new work for orchestra and electronics to pianist Julian Chan on recording Leopold Godowsky's Java Suite.

Despite financial vicissitudes, ENO has continued to deliver some strong and imaginative programming. One of our highlights of 2025 was their revival of Thea Musgrave's Mary, Queen of Scots, and the recent stripped-back production of Britten's Albert Herring showed that less could indeed be more. However, seasons are tending to be compressed, and we did not manage Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking due to diary conflicts, alas. But their recent revival of Handel's Partenope showed that classics were on form too.

At Covent Garden, things have been more variable. The revival of Claus Guth's somewhat disappointing production of Janáček's Jenůfa showed what a benefit it could be having Jakub Hrůša in the pit. Katie Mitchell's new production of Janáček's The Makropulos Case benefitted from a strong cast and fine musical performances, but I found the production, Mitchell's operatic swansong, to be fascinating yet distracting and too-complex. 

I am afraid that Oliver Mears' new production of Handel's Semele failed to convince, especially with a disappointing account of the title role from Pretty Yende, and Waterperry Opera's production of Semele showed us how it should be done. Jetske Mijnssen's new production of Handel's Ariodante was just too interventionist for my taste and ultimately the opera failed to move despite fine musical performances. However, Joe Hill-Gibbins' new production of Handel's Giustino in the Linbury showed how problem Handel operas can have emotional depth. It was a delight that Verdi's Les vêpres siciliennes was brought back with a strong cast and fine conductor, we do not see anything like enough French Grand Opera in the UK.

English Touring Opera had a good year, finding form again with a stylish account of Bellini's The Capulets and the Montagues set in the 1950s. Autumn saw them bringing an engaging rom-com energy to Donizetti's comedy to Donizetti's The Elixir of Love, along with a powerful account of Britten's The Rape of Lucretia of which any company could be proud of.

Opera North was also in fine form, and in a remarkably busy year for them we did manage to catch their imaginative reinvention of Handel's Susanna, performed with Phoenix Dance Theatre as a remarkable dance drama, along with a revival of Phyllida Lloyd's 1993 production of Puccini's La Boheme enlivened by a fine young cast. And we were pleased to be able to catch Melly Still's remarkable production of Britten's Peter Grimes at WNO though budget cuts are making the company's touring schedules look worryingly sparse.