Approaching the end of what will surely become a classic series of Ockeghem’s entire sacred music, The Clerks’ Group here shows a certain weariness. Everything is technically fine, but the performances often fail to grab the attention. It is at its best in the sections performed by solo voices – the ‘Pleni’ of the Missa Cuiusvis Toni, and the ‘Pleni’, ‘Benedictus’ and ‘Agnus II’ of the Missa Quinti Toni. Here The Clerks’ Group shows the fluency and freedom of expression that has marked its best work over the years and seems necessary to make Ockeghem’s music speak.
Because it should never be forgotten that, for everything so many people have done in recent years to make Ockeghem easier to understand, his music is decidedly odd and often resolutely irrational. Even in these two works, among the most attractive he composed, everything needs to be approached with unusual delicacy; and rather too often here the rhythms become metrically staid, the shapes lose their direction, and the words get swallowed as though to support the old theory that Ockeghem didn’t really bother about the texts he set. Most surprisingly, given Edward Wickham’s generally flawless instinct for the tempo that works, the music often seems to move rather too fast for the sense to emerge.
But I am judging this only by the highest standards of The Clerks’ Group’s other Ockeghem recordings (3/95, 3/96, 1/97 and 5/97). Certainly these are serviceable and responsible performances. And it is wonderful to have the added bonus of the rarely sung motet Celeste beneficium: nobody today believes it is by Ockeghem (and, contrary to the otherwise useful note, its ascription to him is based on the single word ‘kegus’ in a single voice-part of its very late manuscript), but it is a wonderful piece and lucidly sung with solo voices.'