Chanticleer is an all-male, all-adult choir (of 12 singers in the present recording), which means that Palestrina's soprano lines as well as the alto ones are taken by countertenors. Without absolute pitch I can't say how much transposition this has involved, but the sound is on the whole warm rather than brilliant, at times rather dark, with an impressively firm bass. It is noticeable that in Chanticleer's selection from the Canticis Canticorum motets they choose none of those with divided soprano lines, only those with two alto or two tenor parts. Without female or boys' voices the sound is uncommonly unified. Tempos are quite fast, but the voices never seem taxed by passages of florid singing. Pitch is commendably precise most of the time.
What a pity, then, that they make so very little expressive distinction between the madrigalian world of the Canticum Canticorum settings and the sombre Requiem; in fact these performances are bland to the point of dullness, skating over Palestrina's word-setting with accuracy but very little urgency. Only in the Mantuan motet Gaude, Barbara is there more than a hint of eloquence; elsewhere Chanticleer seem reluctant to sing out with really full tone. Individual voices are not always very distinguished: a disadvantage when two tenor lines have so often to be shared between three singers. The acoustic is pleasing and the recording clean, but the words are not always easy to pick out. This is the only recording currently available of Palestrina's masterly Requiem, but I would wait for another to appear if I were you.'