This was a perfectly constructed programme, delivered with a real sense of engagement with the ethos of the works performed and the texts set. We didn’t really need an encore of Gibbons’ ‘The Silver Swan’, but who would complain?

Stile Antico brings a fresh, intelligent and collaborative approach to vocal polyphony… John Wilbye’s motet ‘Draw on Sweet Night’ closed this exquisite excursion into (mainly) sixteenth- and seventeenth-century polyphony.

This was a fine and varied concert… by an adventurous ensemble with an insatiable curiosity for music from the past which is outside the mainstream.

Where some ensembles strive for a pure and almost disembodied sound, Stile Antico’s sound is earthy, robust, and very exciting.

Fresh faced, highly trained, and undeniably gifted, the 12 singers employed a straight-tone style that bridged 400 years of vocal repertoire with unflagging urgency and imagination.

In tandem with the fine musicians of the Folger Consort and the Arcadia Viols, Stile Antico turned the church itself into an Arcadia of harmony, counterpoint, and song.

This new CD fully lives up to the supreme blend of voices… a programme that reveals Stile Antico as one of the most fluent, perceptive interpreters of Renaisance polyphony.

To these three shrines come most of the best choirs from Britain and further afield, and on the evidence of A Wondrous Mystery on the second evening of the Temple Winter Festival, there’s none more sheerly perfect than Stile Antico, now 10 years old.

Stile Antico has produced another pure-voiced, imaginatively programmed disc with this selection of mostly German Renaissance carols and motets.

This is sure to be a justly popular Christmas choice. it is a smooth and assured album and both the ensemble sound and the individual voices are extremely attractive.

Tudor polyphony is music with enough strength, passion, beauty and drama to soar and inspire across the world. And on Friday night, with Stile Antico so cleanly expressive, so lithe, so well integrated and balanced, this wonderful repertoire had the world’s best possible ambassadors.

The a cappella performances are consistently beautiful and soothing throughout, and the quietly joyous mood of the music fits the album’s title perfectly.