Palestrina: Missa Benedicta es

“It is hard to think of a record label having had a more auspicious debut or one that so clearly forecast what was to come over the next decade, in terms of both repertory and performance quality. Here are reissues of two of the supreme masterpieces of sixteenth-century music, works that had been all too rarely heard. Hearing the chant together with the motet of around 1500 and Palestrina’s Mass of the 1560s illuminates all three: it is truly invigorating to hear how subtly Palestrina transforms Josquin’s music to create a new and extraordinarily varied masterpiece of his own. The performance already shows most of the qualities we associate with The Tallis Scholars: springy rhythms, marvellously bright and transparent textures in which all six voices are easily heard, fine tuning and – most important – a fluidity of tempo that keeps the music constantly alive. True, there is the odd sudden change of gear of a kind that Peter Phillips would probably prefer to avoid now; and there are occasional moments when the voices lose their focus. But it is a record that emphatically justifies its reissue.” (David Fallows, Gramophone, July 1990)