Hot on the heels of The Sixteen’s acclaimed recording with Fretwork of the Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets (11/22) comes a more classically conceived programme. Byrd’s influences and interactions with colleagues are to the fore: most intriguing is the chance to hear the famous Ne irascaris, Domine alongside the piece from which Byrd drew his opening gambit, Philippe van Wilder’s O doux regard. That Quomodo cantabimus? was a response to Philippe de Monte’s Super flumina Babylonis has seen them paired together before, and the same link exists between Clemens’s Tristitia et anxietas and Byrd’s eponymous motet. Byrd’s music, in turn, inspires two new pieces by Dobrinka Tabakova.

The concept is good and the recital hangs together, but whereas the complete Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets brought something new to the catalogue, nearly all of this music has been heard many times: Philippe de Monte wrote hundreds of motets, but O suavitas et dulcedo is easily his most-recorded piece, with no obvious connection with Byrd; much the same might be said of Clemens’s Ego flos campi. Both are glorious pieces, ideally suited to concert performance, but to record them yet again presupposes that one has something fresh to say about them.

The same ought to go for these ubiquitous examples of Byrd’s music. Fans of The Sixteen will find themselves on familiar territory, and their fluency in this repertory is undoubted. But what was written about programming applies to the performances, which add precious little to our picture of Byrd, too often giving the impression of musicians who have sung this music many times doing so again. I detect little urgency or pathos in the penitential numbers, little to distinguish the chanson O doux regard and the English-texted Turn our captivity from the surrounding motets. Repetitions of phrases (so often a marker of heightened expression) elicit little or no gradation. It’s all very reverential and safe: even Ego flos campi fails to seduce.

For all the surface opulence, local ensemble details are undercooked and imprecise: Ego flos campi is a case in point, and much of the newly composed pieces too – Julie Cooper’s fine solo in Arise Lord into thy rest notwithstanding. If one chooses a comparatively large ensemble for this repertory, it’s got to be whip-smart.