The Tallis Scholars / Peter PhillipsSt John's, Smith Square<br></br>The Sixteen / Harry Christophers, St John's, Smith Square, London

When one is confronted by two of our most highly praised and much-recorded choral groups, both excelling in 16th-century repertoire on successive evenings at the same venue, the urge to compare and contrast is difficult to resist. And to suggest that The Tallis Scholars are the more consistently purist in their approach, while The Sixteen are more luxuriantly various, would be no more than to hint at the differences.

No doubt it is a tribute to the vision of Peter Phillips that the core line-up of his Tallis Scholars has remained so faithful since he founded them almost 30 years ago. Their principal virtues have always been precision of intonation and absolute clarity of texture – rarely more than two voices to a part – together with a penchant for crisp articulation, high pitch and fastish tempos. The downside of this approach is that bass-lines can sometimes sound lightweight, and the unfolding of pieces a bit matter-of-fact.

In a characteristic programme comprising large slabs of Tudor polyphony, one felt, for instance, that the textural contrasts at the start of the Gloria of Byrd's Mass in Four Parts went unpointed, though the poignant concluding "Dona Nobis Pacem" was the more plangent for its restraint.

Where Phillips has confined himself strictly to choral music from between 1450 and 1650 – the odd John Tavener disc aside – The Sixteen, under their founder Harry Christophers, have ranged far more widely, and their programme was a more frankly seasonal affair, with carols ranging from the late Middle Ages to the early 19th century, and the snappy addition of a period-instrument consort. But there were also two marmoreal pillars of polyphony by Tallis.

Christophers has always preferred a fuller, more vibrant vocal sound, with seamless phrasing and passionate, wave-like dynamics. Under his direction, the Gloria from the Mass "Puer Natus" and the responsory "Videte miraculum", positively surged with glowing colour and human fervour.

Yet neither could quite efface the impact of the culminating item from the night before. Tallis built few more commanding structures than his vast votive antiphon "Salve intemerata" – a texture gradually expanding from muscular two-part writing to full five-part complexity, and seeming to sustain its 16-minute span in no more than about four mighty paragraphs. Here, the austere purity of the Tallis Scholars, with their keening high sopranos, seemed to take on an anti-sensual, unworldly intensity that was quite overwhelming.

Ultimately, of course, the utterly contrary approaches of these two choirs is wonderfully complementary. Whatever else might be said of the current state of music, we are surely living in a golden age of Renaissance choral performance.