A well-rounded, comprehensive recital of music for Pentecost. The texts, drawn from chants for the feast, are highly inspiring. The opening six-part motet, Dum complerentur, a vivid description of the coming of the Holy Spirit as a ‘mighty rushing wind’, has a text calculated to stimulate any composer. Palestrina’s stirring motet reappears completely transformed in his Mass, quiet and pleading in the Kyrie, exuberant in the Gloria. The choir catches the spirit of each movement with remarkable flexibility.

The choir’s renowned, so-called Continental, vocal quality has persisted throughout its existence, even with a succession of very different choir directors. Due in part to the building’s acoustic, this factor almost certainly affects their singing of the chant. The beautiful Carolingian Alleluia: Veni Sancte Spiritus, with its melisma on the word ‘amoris’, is an excellent illustration of the trebles in full flight, singing with enormous confidence in the vast cathedral. In alternation with the low voices in the sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus, they have the edge over the men who sound a trifle strained on their top notes.

Palestrina’s double choir version of this text shows the whole choir in top form. But I particularly enjoyed the composer’s exciting rhythmic acrobatics, and the choir’s controlled interpretation of them in the final piece, Spiritus Sanctus replevit totam domum: while never departing from the noble majesty of his style, Palestrina describes with thrilling realism the many-voiced confusion when ‘they all began to speak in a multitude of different tongues’. Highly recommended.