The music here is astonishing…The Clerkes of Oxenford were a choir unlike any other.

The performances are beautifully controlled and perfectly shaped. The girls singing the treble part produce high clear, vibrato-less sounds which blend and, combined with the high pitch of the other parts, cause the polyphony to achieve clarity and transparency.

The first disc contains a selection of music by Orlando Gibbons, with a mixture of anthems, verse anthems and the hymns and songs, these latter assembled into coherent sequences. All are gravely beautiful…There is…some quietly beautiful singing here. Wulstan seems to relish slow and smoothly produced beauty.

The second disc is devoted to the early Tudor composer John Sheppard. It is Sheppard’s music with its startlingly high treble lines that I associate with the sound-world of the Clerkes of Oxenford. They sing Sheppard’s Missa Cantate and one of his Responds, a substantial work in its own right. Here the high treble line is given a shape and clarity that belie its tessitura, testimony to the amount of training that must have been required. The Respond, by contrast, is sung with counter-tenors on the top line, providing a vibrant rich texture.

The final disc starts with Tallis’s Missa puer natus est…The choir sings a shapely plainchant introit before launching into the Gloria. Wulstan performs all the surviving music, Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei complete, plus the surviving torso of the Credo. Wulstan is sober and steady, even the Hosannas are controlled rather than lively, but this befits the work’s penitential nature. The conclusion to the Agnus Dei is mesmerisingly beautiful.

The final disc finishes with Robert White’s Lamentations of Jeremiah. Here we return to the high treble part. The effect blends gravity and beauty with moments of delicacy and daringly quiet singing.

These performances influenced generations of British performers and they still sound amazing. © 2012 MusicWeb International Read complete review