Gramophone Award for Early Music, 2009
Song of Songs
Stile Antico’s third recording won the 2009 Gramophone Award for Early Music and reached the top of the US Classical Chart. The beautiful and erotic texts of the Song of Songs, a love-poem traditionally attributed to King Solomon, inspired the great composers of the Continental Renaissance to some of their most ardent music. This rich selection traces an emotional arc from the intensity of the Flemish masters to the most vivid, madrigialian motets by Vivanco and Victoria.
We regret that this recording is currently out of stock.
Recorded: March, 2008
Label: Harmonia Mundi
Format: Hybrid SACD
Catalogue Number: HMU807489
The superb singers of Stile Antico are up to the challenge of presenting all the required moods from pious restraint to melting abandon… A magnificent display of the very best kind of polyphonic music.
BBC Music Magazine
Choc de Classica, May 2009
Classic FM Magazine Editor’s Choice, July 2009
Classics Today 10/10, April 2009
Gramophone Editor’s Choice, August 2009
GRAMMY Nominee, Best Small Ensemble Performance, 2010
Peter Quantrill, Gramophone (August, 2009)
A magnificent display of the very best kind of polyphonic music.
Anthony Pryer, BBC Music Magazine (May 2009)
This was, hands down, the best recording I heard all year.
David Weininger, The Boston Globe (1 January, 2010)
Somehow I missed this young British vocal ensemble’s first two releases. This third is so impressive that my omission will be remedied very quickly.
Andrew O'Connor, International Record Review (10 June, 2009)
In suave, finely tuned performances by the young British vocal ensemble Stile Antico, the music is at once stately and inviting, devotional and, well, sexy.
Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle (1 May, 2009)
We should be grateful that the remarkable young British vocal ensemble Stile Antico are the polished and stylish vehicle for transmitting this beauty and truth to our ears, and they do this consistently throughout a program that will intrigue and entice all Renaissance choral music fans.
David Vernier, Classics Today (27 April, 2009)
I’ve never heard people present this repertoire with such a high level of commitment… exquisite ensemble and intelligent programming choices.
Hugo Munday, Amazon.com Editorial (1 July, 2009)
The members of Stile Antico dig into their vocal lines as if they are physically pressing against one another, so tight is their ensemble, so gracefully conjoined their vocal timbres… The blanket of sound creates an effect that is, not to put too fine a point on it, orgasmic.
Joanne Sydney Lessner, Opera News (13 November, 2009)
This is a beautifully conceived album of the highest quality of recording and performance that would also serve as a spectacular introduction to Renaissance choral art for all audiences. Don’t miss this one at any cost!
Steven Ritter, Audiophile Audition (2 June, 2009)
Sumptuously delivered by the peerless Stile Antico…
Andy Gill, The Independent (29 May, 2009)
Stunning… the singers enter Palestrina’s Nigra sum in slow caressing waves until their sound becomes a lover’s smothering embrace.
RJ, Classic FM Magazine (April 2009)
Sophie Roughol, Classica (5 May, 2009)
Gramophone (August 2009)
The first six minutes alone of this amazingly beautiful CD, Clemens non Papa’s seven-voiced motet “Ego flos campi”, is sufficient to put the listener completely under their spell. Like a Gothic cathedral, this dazzling masterpiece offers peace and beauty, sensuality and magic in equal measure. A feast in sound!
Oswald Beaujohn, Bayerischer Rudfunk (19 May, 2009)
Were one to listen only to the virtually ideal opening of the impressive motet Ego flos Campi by Clemens non Papa, any lover of vocal polyphony would immediately recognise the interpretative rank of this group. With this new recording the ensemble underscores its quickly-established, impressive status.
Matthias Lange, Klassik.com (24 June, 2009)
Perhaps the most ravishing sound I heard this year.
Alex Ross, The New Yorker (10 August, 2009)
This ensemble, its members still in their 20s and just a dozen beautifully blended voices singing a cappella, has emerged as one of the best and freshest early music choirs around.
Fiona Maddocks, The Observer (3 May, 2009)
In the group’s first disc to venture outside English polyphony, the exterior luster remains, but now fueled by a sense of the music’s inner purpose…
David Patrick Stearns, The Philadelphia Inquirer (10 May, 2009)
- Clemens non Papa: Ego Flos Campi
- Palestrina: Osculetur me
- Plainchant: Dum esset rex
- Guerrero: Surge, propera amica mea
- Gombert: Quam pulchra es
- Plainchant: Nigra sum
- Lassus: Veni, dilecte mi
- Victoria: Vadam et circuibo
- Plainchant: Alleluia, tota pulchra es
- Guerrero: Ego flos campi
- Lheritier: Nigra sum
- Plainchant: Laeva eius
- Ceballos: Hortus Conclusus
- Palestrina: Nigra sum
- Plainchant: Speciosa facta es
- Vivanco: Veni, dilecte mi
- Guerrero: Trahe me post te
- Plainchant: Iam hiems transiit
- Victoria: Vidi speciosam