Penguin Guide Rosette Winners

“The most striking feature of these performances is how wonderfully varied they are. In some pieces… the presentational style almost enters the realm of musical theatre, while in Tallis's God Grant with Grace the utterly still and simple display of the music is transporting.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2008 ****

“Stile Antico perform without a director, and the use of choral effects (gradual build-ups of intensity, or the opposite) doesn't seem overly staged. They certainly make a confident noise, helped by a sound recording that brings out the natural bloom of their sound. ” Gramophone Magazine, June 2008

“wonderful music and singing of considerable distinction” International Record Review

“The young singers of Stile Antico, in their second disc of Tudor music, are magnificent... glorious music, gloriously sung.” Sunday Times Classical CD of the Week

“The singing is technically polished, the tuning faultless and the overall sonority rounded and rich.” Choir & Organ

“This is incomparable music by one of the great est English composers and it was high time for someone to take a fresh look at these works in the light of more recent research and of changing attitudes to performance practice.
Byrd had composed his three settings of the Ordinary of the Mass in troubled times for the small recusant Catholic community that still remained in England in spite of persecution.
The settings would have been sung, in all probability, during festive, albeit furtive, celebrations of the old time-honoured Roman liturgy, in private chapels in the depths of the country, at places such as Ingatestone, the seat of Byrd's principal patron, Sir John Petre. Andrew Carwood has recorded them in the Fitzalan Chapel of Arundel Castle, a small but lofty building with a clear resonance that enables the inner voices of the part-writing to come through straight and clean. It hasn't the aura of King's College Chapel, but is probably easier to manage than, say, Winchester Cathedral or Merton College Chapel.
Carwood uses two voices to a part in all three Masses. In comparison with rival recordings he's alone in selecting high voices for the three-part Mass, transposed up a minor third, which introduces a note of surprising lightness and grace. He, too, is alone in taking the initiative of using an allmale choir for the four-part Mass – alto, tenor, baritone, bass. This close, low texture, together with the transposition down an augmented fourth, adds a fitting sense of gravity to the performance.
In particular, it heightens the poignancy of such passages as the 'dona nobis pacem' in the AgnusDei, with its series of suspensions in the drooping phrases leading to the final cadence.
That dimension of understanding is precisely what this recording by The Cardinall's Musick so keenly demonstrates. Theirs is a simplicity of style that belies simplistic criticism. Vibrato is used sparingly: 40 years on, some listeners might consider its constant use by a King's Choir of the late 1950s almost too overpowering. Carwood chooses his tempos with care, avoiding the modern tendency to speed everything up inordinately.
The interesting historical note on the whole background is a good pointer to what the listener may experience as the music unfolds.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010