Byrd: Plorans plorabit

“Clare Wilkinson's pure Mezzo voice emerges from the mists of time in the opening antiphon by Talllis, sustaining and beautifully articulating the text. …the Rose Consort play in a sublimely unfussy, unfettered manner worthy of the music.” Gramophone Magazine, September 2008

“The sixth volume of The Byrd Edition is a landmark recording, covering most of Byrd's Holy Week and Easter music, from the St John's Passion choruses for Good Friday to the Octave day of Easter, and including miniature Vespers at the end of the Easter Vigil, and the whole of the Proper of the Mass for Easter Day.
The opening motet Plorans plorabit, recalling the Lamentations chanted earlier in the week, is a stern reminder of the recusant atmosphere in which Byrd lived out his religious beliefs. The straightforward Passion choruses are rightly set into their proper context, an edition of St John's Passion prepared by Byrd's Roman contemporary, Guidetti. Admirably sung, Carwood maintains throughout a remarkable balance between drama and restraint. A gentle consort song, Adoramoste, fills the space in the listener's imagination between the burial of Christ and his rising from the dead. The miniature Vespers follow, sung, almost with bated breath, to Byrd's simple three-part settings of the two antiphons, with a correction of Bretts' suggested psalmtone for the single – and shortest – psalm.
The Mass Resurrexi is exhilarating, with surging themes, rhythmic interplay and bursts of joy.
Byrd, unable to resist word-painting suggestive of earthquake at the Offertory, introduces here a note of merriment into a particularly serious liturgy, and doesn't entirely avoid it elsewhere.
Thankfully it was under- rather than overplayed.
The solemn final four-part processional Christusresurgens is a triumphant restatement of the Easter: total joy.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

'exceptional performances by this quite wonderful group of singers'
Church Music Quarterly