Flanders and Italy – two nations bound tightly together in music, as Adrien Mabire and his Mercenaires argue in this attractive new release. The man at the crux of this Renaissance cultural exchange is Giovanni Gabrieli, whose works blend the influence of both Willaert and Lassus, as well as the Italian Venetian style of his uncle Andrea.

What we get here are the early works – the single- and double-choir motets published in the Concerti (1587) and Sacrae symphoniae (1597). Mabire is keen to stress in his Introduction that these are no apprentice pieces but were composed aged 30 by a mature musician, and the variety – both of scope and forces – bears this out.

Just six singers and six instrumentalists (including Mabire himself) tackle everything from four-part instrumental canzonas to the 12-voice Angelus ad pastores. Cornetts and trombones alternately double voices and supply missing lines, creating a constantly shifting texture that keeps the ear alert, grounding Gabrieli’s Inclina Domine in heavy solemnity and low resonance but adding brilliance and buzz to his eight-part Jubilate Deo.

This mixture of voices and instruments works best in the mid-size works, especially those for double-choir, where the antiphonal energy is propelled by the brass. But by the time we reach 10 voices in the Surrexit pastor bonus or the even larger Angelus ad pastores we’re sacrificing vertical clarity for booming force.

The disc is recorded (counterintuitively) in the Chapel Royal at Versailles, and the sound bounces restlessly off all that marble, leaving you wishing that the group had included just a few more works for voices alone – a sonic firebreak for all that flickering counterpoint.

Perhaps it’s also a question of style. Mabire favours straight, white voices with no softening spin on them – voices, in fact, that come as close as possible to early brass. Climaxes can get a bit unremitting as sound is sustained at all costs rather than allowed to ebb and swell. It’s a technique that works brilliantly as a one-off (for example, the opening Magnificat by Merulo, which hits you straight between the eyes) but loses impact cumulatively.