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Stile Antico A SPANISH NATIVITY

The Spanish ‘Golden Age’ witnessed an astonishing musical flowering, worthy of Spain’s newfound preeminence on the world stage. Focusing on works for Christmas and Epiphany, Stile Antico explores this glittering musical treasury, drawing together an irresistible mix of sumptuous polyphony and infectiously joyful folk dances.

The centrepiece of the disc is the superbly rich and luminous Missa Beata Dei genitrix Maria by Alonso Lobo. Interspersed between its movements are motets by Tomás Luis de Victoria, Francisco Guerrero and Cristóbal de Morales, an exuberant ‘ensalada’ by Mateo Flecha and classic villancicos - Spain’s answer to the traditional carol.

Ensemble Plus Ultra FROM SPAIN TO ETERNITY The Sacred Polyphony of El Greco's Toledo

Several of the composers on this Archiv release - Alonso Lobo, Cristóbal de Morales, perhaps Francisco Guerrero - will be familiar to anyone who has sung in a college glee club. Their short motets, with orderly polyphony that seems to hang in a perfect balance, seem to communicate timeless religious essences. Less common are recordings that situate the music in the Spanish cities where it was composed, and that's not what is here. Although the graphics promise "sacred polyphony of El Greco's Toledo," only the career of the comparatively lesser-known Alonso de Tejeda really overlapped with that of Greek-Spanish master; the rest of the composers worked there earlier or, in the case of Francisco Guerrero, hardly at all (he served there as Morales' apprentice). And even if assigning correspondences between the music and art of a given place and time is a tricky business, the art of El Greco, with its Mannerist distortions of reality, seems almost diametrically opposed to the peaceful world of these composers; his musical cousin is perhaps Italian Carlo Gesualdo. So listeners are left with the cleanly sung readings of the Ensemble Plus Ultra, a bit small at eight singers but precise in that difficult configuration. The sounds coming out of your speakers will be appealing, but the group has plenty of competition on this ground. (James Manheim)