White, Robert: Christe qui lux es et dies

“This is a concept album, a sequence of purgative music on the theme of death by a wide range of British composers from the English Renaissance to today.” Sunday Times, 11th March 2012

“The singing is immaculate...MacMillan's music is as technically demanding as it is emotionally powerful and it is a a wonder that these exceptional young singers make it all sound so effortless.” Classic FM Magazine, April 2012 *****

“For me, the highlight is Herbert Howells’s Requiem, grief seeping from every cadence. It’s beautifully sung by Paul McCreesh’s Gabrieli Consort in an acoustic that sounds aptly like a tomb but is, in fact, Ely Cathedral.” The Times, 17th March 2012 ****

“Any disc subtitled 'Music of Mourning & Consolation' is not going to be a bundle of laughs. But Paul McCreesh has devised such a satisfying programme of mostly short a cappella pieces that the effect is the reverse of depressing.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2012

“there are numerous indications of the elevated artistry Paul McCreesh and the 22 singers of his Gabrieli Consort bring to this beautifully planned and executed programme...There's also much emotion in the performances. McCreesh's choice of sopranos who either have little vibrato or can eliminate it when requested has a palpable impact...This is a superlative, unmissable issue.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2012 *****

“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

“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

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

“Retrospectively the disc's final item, Ligeti's Luxaeterna, dominates the recital. Not only does it make an indelible impression, but it also casts its light over the entire programme and style of singing.
To a listener who has not heard it before (a slightly smaller category than might be thought, as the piece was used in the film 2001: A SpaceOdyssey) it may even come as the light on the road to Damascus, a blinding revelation of unknown choral sonorities. An extraordinary sound–world is opening up, with long, finely ruled streams of light, a spectrum of colours wide as the distance from heaven to earth, and all mingling eventually within the cavern of a great bell. The challenge to singers (even when assisted by the reverberance of Ely Cathedral's Lady Chapel) is formidable indeed, and these young voices (with lungs and ears involved also) do marvellously well. And so they do throughout. The quality of choral tone here is remarkable: no thready sopranos, none of those bone–dry basses, but a sound that, though strictly disciplined in the matter of vibrato, is still fresh and natural. They achieve wonders of crescendo, as in William Harris's Bring us, O LordGod, and their opening chords (in Tallis's O natalux for instance) are as if cut by the sharpest slicer ever made. Even so, this smooth, flawless beauty of sound is, in some contexts, like the modern beauty of the face of a heroine in some televised piece of period–drama. Josquin Desprez's Nuncdimittis is an example: the singing is extremely beautiful, but conceptually (and not just in the women's voices) seems anachronistic. It's as though they have worked on their programme with the precept 'All choral music aspires to the condition of Ligeti'. A wondrous record, all the same.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010