Byrd: Miserere mihi, Domini

“This outstanding release … features absolutely ravishing performances by Stile Antico… This is an extraordinary recording: In its debut on Harmonia Mundi Stile Antico has given choral music lovers everywhere a reason to celebrate what looks like the beginning of another beautiful relationship!” Classics Today 10/10

“The singing is staggeringly beautiful, the balance meticulous.” Sunday Times

“Debut recordings rarely come as impressive as this sequence of 16th-century English music for the evening service that concluded the daily monastic round of prayer. It suggests that Stile Antico have a future as bright as their pure and crystalline soprano sound, which is heard to special advantage in the pieces by John Sheppard, the most lavishly represented composer on the disc.” The Telegraph

“Contrasts abound: Byrd’s florid three-section Tribue Domine is almost Marian in its vastness, while Tallis’s hymn setting O nata lux de lumine is brevity itself...The dozen singers perform expressively and blend beautifully throughout, while Skinner, who adopts a commonsense approach to pitch standards, injects passion into every note.” Sunday Times, 30th January 2011 ****

“They use solo voices throughout, mixed voices with a fairly open sound that brings with it more vibrato than we are used to hearing in such music nowadays...That results in performances that are refreshingly free of self-indulgence. Some of the big Byrd pieces in particular are very good indeed.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2011

“The prevailing mood is penitential, but the pieces are never dull; there's much delight to be had in listening to the way the individual voice parts weave in and out...Skinner gets his singers to bring [the false relations] out so that they send shivers down your spine...[He] shapes the music extremely well.” Classic FM Magazine, March 2011 ****

“Homophonic passages impress with their splendour, enriched here by the chestnut hues of basses William Gaunt and Robert Macdonald. The clarity of line lays bare the ingenuity of counterpoint, no matter how thick the texture becomes - a formidable achievement in Byrd's 'double imitation' motets.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2011 ***

“This is the first time the Cantiones Sacrae has been recorded complete and 'in the original order intended by the composers themselves'...An auspicious beginning to a mighty undertaking.” International Record Review, May 2011

“This disc adopts an imaginative approach to programming Byrd's music by presenting works in different genres grouped together to demonstrate a single stage in his development. It includes Latin motets, keyboard dances and variations on popular songs of the day, and sacred and secular songs (and a dialogue) with viols. There's so much here that wins our admiration: the dazzling contrapuntal elaboration of Attollite portas, the close-knit texture of Da mihiauxilium and the massive Ad Dominum cum tribularer; the exuberant variations on O mistressmine (neatly played by Sophie Yates) and Byrd's melodic gift in the strophic O Lord, how vain.
The singers' adoption of period pronunciation – for example, 'rejoice' emerges as 'rejwace' – affects the tuning and the musical sound, it's claimed here, but without rather clearer enunciation the point remains not proven. Probably more upsetting to many will be the Anglicised pronunciation of Latin.
The viol consort gives stylish support and is well balanced, the Fagiolini sopranos occasionally 'catch the mike' on high notes (eg in the passionate pleas of Miserere mihi, Domine), and the recorded level of the virginals might have been a little higher without falsifying its tone. But these are minor criticisms of a most rewarding disc.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010