Two aspects of Lassus come across with particular clarity here. First, as JM mentions in his helpful note, the clue to much of his work lies in the declamation. Not outgoing and dramatic as one finds in Byrd and Victoria; just clear and expressive. Despite the contrasting nature of their musical lines, there is no point in shouting your head off in Exaltabo te and being lugubrious in Tristis est anima mea. Stephen Darlington takes them both gently, but the text and the musical structure create a restrained ebullience in the one and a truly eloquent acceptance of life's trials in the other. That is also why the magnificent De profundis works so well here: the words and textures are clear enough for the psalm-chant basis to come through and for Lassus's beautifully controlled counterpoints to make their mark in that context.
The second feature of the record is the way it stresses the variety of his Mass settings. His early four-voice Missa Venatorum is unbelievably short (made shorter here by the puzzling omission of its longest movement, the Credo). On paper it looks pathetic; but the Christ Church choir make it a work that rewards repeated listening. It is crammed full of telling detail. By contrast, the late and rich five-voice Mass Qual donna unrolls its material with consummate ease. Although it has none of the technical show found in some more famous Mass cycles of its time, it makes its musical and devotional points with the effortless resource of Lassus's contrapuntal invention.
The recording sounds a little bright, but that is presumably on purpose: it helps to keep the music transparent and the texts clear. Except for a tentative performance of Rore's madrigal Qual donna, the singing throughout is persuasive and controlled. Some listeners may regret that no effort is made to pronounce the Latin in the German manner of the Bavarian court chapel, for which the music was composed; and others may be surprised at the lack of instrumental participation that seems to have been de rigueur there. But the singing emphatically suggests that Christ Church may well be our best choir for sixteenth-century polyphony.'