By JD88992
31-Jan-2010

Novel slant on period music  

This disc doesn't pretend to re-create a religious service, though it does intersperse various Lenten or penitential motets between the movements of the featured Mass, based on a chanson whose first line refers to "all the sadness of the world." If you think of Renaissance polyphony mostly as a serene flow of counterpoint, you need to hear this "Osanna"--voices tumbling over each other in what Leon Fleisher calls (in another context) a "chatter of angels"--or the jaunty "Cum sancto spiritu." What's most interesting is Singer Pur's way of performing early music: five of the six singers are men, but a female soprano sings the top line. Fairly close recording captures the group's distinctive sound (more Kings' Singers than cathedral choir), with lightly-applied vibrato bringing out the tang of passing dissonances.
more....