This is wonderful Renaissance music, most of it by Flemish and Spanish composers…. It’s a beautiful disc. Stile Antico is at the top of the Renaissance a cappella scene. Their voices are seamless

Lucid and fresh-sounding, the young, prolific vocal ensemble Stile Antico sings an intriguing program of 15th- and 16th-century works written for the Habsburg courts of Europe. The group is particularly superb, with tremendous dynamic range, in motets of mourning like Pierre de la Rue’s “Absalon fili mi” and Alonso Lobo’s “Versa est in luctum”.

Twelve voices singing unaccompanied, without a conductor, Stile Antico achieve miracles of precision in ensemble and tuning… But a group of settings of the erotic Song of Solomon showed that they could be sensuous too… they were no less accomplished in Watkins’ elegiacally beautiful setting of Shakespeare’s enigmatic allegory.

If you want to hear this music sung by the new generation of specialist advocates, this is the group that will not fail to give you the most polished ensemble sound and technique yet always projecting an expressive aspect that recognizes the human/emotional pertinence of the texts.

Stile Antico gets better and better… What we heard in the glorious St. Paul space was not only beautiful sound from the well-matched and perfectly tuned voices, but fine rhythmic sensitivity to the nuances of attack and phrasing that make this music a joy both to sing and to hear… a magnificent conclusion to a richly varied and rewarding program.

It was the Agnus Dei of Byrd’s Mass and John Taverner’s “O splendor gloriae” that gave the fullest account of what Stile Antico can do. Each had the group’s unique sound, which balances richness and clarity and varies color and texture in sync with the text. Both were meticulously paced, building logically to a conclusion either hushed and intimate (Byrd) or virtuosic and thrilling (Taverner). They were brilliantly realized, both technically...

Its sound creamy and warm, the group sings with a smooth blend that nevertheless allows individual voices to pierce through: a plangent alto here, a slightly husky bass there… The final selection, Taverner’s “O splendor gloriae,” began as a duet and then built through the ensemble to a shining “Amen.”