Byrd: Mass for five voices

“Stanford’s Te Deum and Jubilate from his B flat Service have become comparative rarities, and they make a terrific impact here, organ and choir combining with exultant, spine-tingling resonance...This is cathedral choral singing at its finest and most inspiring.” The Telegraph, 28th July 2010

“This music for Westminster Abbey's patron, St Peter, offers a nimble, not to say ecumenical chance to unite contrasting choral works on one disc...The choir sounds best in Stanford's quintessentially Anglican Service in B flat and in Walton's The Twelve (1965)...Its flamboyant organ part and fugal "Twelve as the winds and the months" finale are intriguing and uplifting.” The Observer, 8th August 2010

“this glorious disc from Hyperion celebrat[es] what the Abbey choir is all about...The centrepiece of the disc is Byrd's glorious Mass for five voices, superbly delivered in the performance of outstanding clarity and sensitivity under James O'Donnell.” International Record Review, September 2010

“The musicians of Westminster Abbey are in top form. Crisp phrasing, firm control of line and lumionous colours create many fine moments, notably in the Palestrina and in Byrd's Gloria. Under organist Robert Quinney, the transcribed Bach Sinfonia sweeps along to a heady climax.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2010 ***

“A sumptuous banquet of choral delight awaits the hungry listener, laid out in three carefully balanced courses, to be savoured slowly, the whole programme sung (and played) with superlative skill” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2010

“This will delight fans of Byrd and this choir. Compelling performances (especially Ave verum) and a resonant if slightly distant sound. Some pieces though (the Mass a 5) have a surface, rather than inner, drive.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2008 ****

“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