With its Christmas theme and grand double-choir layout, Palestrina’s Mass Hodie Christus natus est is well represented in the discography. This is at least its fifth recording and, on their current form, The Sixteen’s new offering goes pretty near the top of the list. The choice is, however, a varied one, with alternatives coming from collegiate institutions with boy trebles (Westminster Cathedral) or from rival ensembles with male falsettists on the top line (Gabrieli Consort) or, as here, women (Oxford Schola Cantorum). The Sixteen let the music speak for itself, as they say. Festive spirit is here more a matter of inner feeling than outward show, as the repose of the Credo’s inner movements testifies, and, for the most part, they avoid the monumentality that can sometimes weigh down Palestrina’s art. It is done with the ensemble’s near-immaculate poise and on this showing their Palestrina cycle will rival (but also, I hope, complement) the Tallis Scholars’. My own preference remains for the much feistier, undoubtedly festive approach of the Gabrieli Consort, with their cornetts, sackbuts and continuo; but for those who prefer their Palestrina classical, let’s say, this does very well indeed.

As in this series’ previous volume (10/11), the accompanying motets are judiciously chosen and confidently handled (the hymn setting Christe Redemptor omnium is performed with all its verses, as Harry Christophers has done with Victoria), though one wishes again that the wonderful Song of Songs settings had been entrusted to the soloists for which these sacred madrigals were surely intended.