This is music-making of the highest order. In general any record of the relatively short pieces that survive from the Middle Ages and Renaissance needs a theme or focus to give it coherence. And there are two inevitable prices of such planning: that some of the pieces are not entirely right for the musicians; and that some are not yet fully in the musicians' bloodstream. Yet another price is almost inevitable with musicians who, like these, are imaginative enough to be constantly searching for new horizons: the records are apt to incorporate experiments that fall short of complete success. The same applies to novels, films, or indeed any other art-form, of course; and the world would be a much poorer place without it.
But what the Hilliard Ensemble present here is an unashamed anthology of pieces that they have done many times in concert over some 15 years. Purely as an anthology it makes very little sense; but its justification is that everything shows them at their superb best. Each piece is not only ideally suited to their voices but sung in a way that shows the experience of performing for innumerable audiences. Take, for example, the case of Byrd's Ne irascaris. It is a long and complex piece bristling with new ideas and expressive details. There is always a temptation to over-emphasize the individual features at the expense of the whole; and there is something wonderfully rich in the restrained understanding shown here by the Hilliard in a reading that will repay repeated listening.
It is always instructive to know which pieces performers continue to find enriching, and particularly so in early repertories for which value-judgements are still somewhat hit and miss. There are some surprises here: Goudimel's gentle and immaculately turned setting of Bonjour mon coeur, much more famously set by Lassus; Dufay's Gloria ad modum tubae, which had seemed to me disappointingly slight until I heard the Hilliard presenting it with such delicacy of phrasing; two tiny little Spanish songs, where each detail is given its weight without any exaggeration. And it is that same lack of exaggeration that gives particular value to the two extended quodlibetic pieces, by Flecha and Janequin. The world would be a much poorer place without that, too.'