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Buy this wonderful CD!

01 May 2008
Classical.net
Mark Sealey

Josquin des Prés (c.1440-1521) wrote only two masses that were based entirely on canon (the same melody overlaps by beginning in successive parts). They are sumptuously performed on this disk by The Tallis Scholars. It's amazingly beautiful music expertly sung, and can be recommended without reservation to anyone who loves early Renaissance polyphony in particular. And especially to the collector of this remarkable - and prolific - composer's works. The Tallis Scholars' style is the usual polished, gleaming one. Too "perfect", perhaps, for some; yet here not a performance that lacks life or cheer; especially given the mathematically precise nature of the Masses' construction.

... it's this sense of the extra which so enhances what's to be heard on this CD - thanks to the singers' superb understanding of these threads as they run through these sublime compositions of Josquin's. Rather than submerging us, the music is consistently misty: not amorphous but fluid. It's not necessary to know that mist is composed of water droplets. Yet Phillips and the Tallis Scholars do know this. And such refinement refreshes anyone who would wash away the dust. Now almost 35 years old, the Tallis Scholars (with eight voices here) have managed to open this music - successfully and unhesitatingly. Buy this wonderful CD!

Read the full review at classical.net

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Buy this wonderful CD!