It was a good idea, characteristic of the imaginative planning that Peter Phillips puts into his records, to combine one of Palestrina's most famous Masses with another that is a rarity. There may have been enough recordings of his Missa brevis over the years (even if there is no other in the LP and CD catalogue at the moment), but the Tallis Scholars perform it well enough to justify the duplication. By singing a tone below written pitch, they manage to create a texture in which the two middle voices match exceptionally well in their tone-colour, something that is particularly helpful with the constantly overlapping lines that characterize this work. So everything here is clear and beautifully balanced, with just two voices on each line. As befits the nature of the music, Phillips is more reflective in his approach than in some of his other recent recordings, and that too works well. My only reservation about their performance is in the last section, the crowning second Agnus Dei in five voices. Here, strangely enough, the two canonic top lines are too prominent so you hear more of the repeated phrases, less of the extraordinary variety Palestrina puts into the lower voices. And for my own ear there could have been rather more passion in the repeated acclamations of ''Dona nobis pacem''.
The rarity is the Mass Nasce la gioia mia, based on a madrigal by the Neapolitan composer Giovan Leonardo Primavera who was probably some 20 years younger than Palestrina. In his sleeve-note, Phillips discusses Palestrina's perplexing choice of model and outlines some of the other ways in which the Mass is unusual. Certainly it is the kind of work one might almost suspect was not really by Palestrina were it not that it turns up in his Fifth Book of Masses (1590). There is something just slightly uncomfortable about the design, and rather fewer apparent strokes of the kind of mastery that characterizes Palestrina's finest works. But then it has to be said that the performance is rather less comfortable, and seems less deeply considered than in the Missa brevis. The balance of the six-voice texture works less well and, perhaps as a result, the speeds often seem a little rushed. But that may simply be to say that an unfamiliar work is more difficult to perform with complete conviction.
It is preceded by an expressive and well-turned performance of Primavera's madrigal (with solo voices) where—as in the Mass itself—the balance somewhat favours the higher voices. Nevertheless, this is surely a record people will be delighted to own; the pleasure of being able to get to know one of Palestrina's less famous Masses combines with that of hearing a superb performance of the Missa brevis.'