This is a remarkable recording. In some ways it is like a rediscovery, for here is an approach not too far from Pro Cantione Antiqua at their best (one thinks of the pioneering recordings made in the 1960s and 1970s) and yet that group never recorded the work. That sense of rediscovery comes in fact as much from the difference between this and the versions by The Tallis Scholars and Westminster Cathedral Choir (under David Hill): though the latter places the Matins lesson Taedet animam meam in a semi-liturgical reconstruction of Lauds, this new recording takes a different approach and adds chant to the Requiem Mass itself, thus creating even more of a context for Victoria's magisterial work. We have therefore the Epistle and preceding prayer, the Tract, Sequence, Gospel, Preface, Lord's Prayer and Postcommunion in addition to the polyphony; this also means, for example, that the Kyrie is sung nine-fold with alternating chant instead of simply three-fold only in polyphony. Though no source is mentioned on the pre-issue copy I have, one may presume that the chant was taken from a suitable Spanish source by Luis Lozano Virumbrales, an expert in this field and author of the insert-notes (which describe in detail what the actual celebration of the Requiem Mass would have been like) together with Paul McCreesh.
The performance itself is stately and imposing, with a tremendous homogeneity of sound: the use of an all-male choir, together with the added chant, lends it a tangibly monastic feel, though it would have been a fortunate monastery indeed that had falsettists of this quality. About the performance of the chant there are two points of interest: firstly, that it is doubled, like the polyphony, by a bajon, common Spanish practice at this period, and secondly, that McCreesh is not afraid to have the falsettists singing the chant too. The pace of the polyphony often seems to be unhurried, but it never feels slow. Indeed, in almost every case the polyphonic sections are taken slightly quicker than The Tallis Scholars, and Westminster Cathedral Choir are of course faced with the hugely reverberant acoustics of their home building. From the beginning the singing is involving and incarnate, but the real magic comes nearer the end: from the Agnus Dei onwards one feels that the Gabreli Consort have really got the measure of the music and are allowing it to speak through them. The final great responsory, the ''Libera me'' is performed with heart stopping power and conviction.
The Tallis Scholars approach the music as though it were a concert suite, with no added chant, and in many respects this pays dividends, since they are able to build it up in an almost architectural way, whereas the Westminster choir, though they also add no chant except for the opening Matins lesson, somehow concentrate more on each separate section of the Mass. Of course this works: Victoria's sublime music is indeed conceived architecturally. And yet this is not all; McCreesh's approach shows something else, shows how it would have fitted into and complemented the liturgical framework without ever losing its own internal power and drama (for that of course is what it was intended for). A revelatory disc.'