This is the second recital in a year devoted to the music of Heinrich Isaac's most famous pupil, and his successor at the Imperial court of Innsbruck (he went on to become a predecessor of Lassus at Munich). Senfl is a vastly underrated composer, and it is very good to have such a broad selection of his music. Many of the pieces recorded here are bumptious arrangements of popular German tunes, drinking songs or mildly risque stories. Some are given straightforward chordal accompaniments, but others receive lavish contrapuntal adornments of which Senfl's mentor would have been proud. But the recital has its serious, melancholy moments, too: the well-known Pacientia, the lament on the death of Emperor Maximilian, or the setting of the psalm Beati omnes. Whatever the emotional register, the tone and declamation of Weser-Renaissance are admirably well judged and delivered (with perhaps the exception of the psalm, in which the doubling of voices and instruments is a shade heavy). Other than that, voices and instruments are combined in a sensible manner; the two give alternate verses in strophic songs, and are sometimes combined at the conclusion. The recording shows off both groups to good advantage.
In all, an engaging recital from one of Germany's most consistently successful ensembles, and a long-overdue presentation of Senfl's achievement in the round.'