Choc du Monde de la Musique, February 2007
Music for Compline
Now re-released at budget price to mark the group’s tenth anniversary, Stile Antico’s debut recording met with universal acclaim, winning the Diapason d’or de l’année, Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, CHOC du Monde de la Musique, and receiving a Grammy® nomination. It reached #2 in the US Billboard Classical Chart, #1 in the Amazon Classical Bestsellers list, and was chosen as one of Amazon’s discs of the year. Serene music, written for the final monastic service of the day, by the great English Tudor masters.
The re-released disc includes the original programme notes, but not the texts and translations of the music sung; those requiring these can download them here.
We regret that this recording is no longer available as a physical purchase. It can still be purchased as a download from popular online retailers.
Recorded: April, 2006
Label: Harmonia Mundi
Format: CD
Catalogue Number: HMX2907419
Absolutely ravishing performances by Stile Antico, among the most promising vocal groups to come along in the last 20 years.
Classics Today
Classics Today 10/10, January 2007
Diapason d’or de l’année, 2007
GRAMMY Nominee, Best Small Ensemble Performance, 2008
Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, II/2007
Absolutely ravishing performances by Stile Antico… among the most promising vocal groups to come along in the last 20 years… This is an extraordinary recording: In its debut on Harmonia Mundi Stile Antico has given choral music lovers everywhere a reason to celebrate what looks like the beginning of another beautiful relationship!
David Vernier, Classics Today (1 May, 2007)
Debut recordings rarely come as impressive as this… Stile Antico have a future as bright as their pure and crystalline soprano sound.
Elizabeth Roche, The Daily Telegraph (3 March, 2007)
This is superb singing that’s also blessed – I mean that literally – with profound delicacy and reverence. You sense the group is singing for its own spiritual good, with a combination of relaxed, introspective tempos and inner conviction.
David Patrick Stearns, The Philadelphia Inquirer (11 February, 2007)
With a magnificent tonal palette and bold choices of dynamics, the interpretation is remarkably cohesive and inventive… At the close of this rich office, the spell is such that we are convinced, in the words of Baudelaire, the twilight poet par excellence, that “the world falls asleep in a warm light”.
David Fiala, Diapason (February 2007)
These polyphonic settings, true “songs of the night”, glow with a mystical radiance, whose most poetic nuances are captured by the young vocal ensemble Stile Antico… One is struck by the maturity and acute sensitivity of this interpretation… Stile Antico demonstrate a joy in their singing which is literally euphoric.
Marc Desmet, Monde de la Musique (February 2007)
This is superb choral singing that stands out from the crowd of recordings of unaccompanied English music of the sixteenth century.
James Manheim, AllMusic
GATENS, American Record Guide (May 2007)
One of those alchemic discs with a total greater than the sum of its parts… This is as near-perfect a recording as you will find of this repertoire, and one that sounds as fresh as the Tallis Scholars did 25 years ago.
Choir and Organ (April 2007)
Early Music America (Summer 2007)
Clifford Bartlett, Early Music Review (February, 2007)
Stile Antico is relatively new British ensemble on the scene that sings with marvelous understanding and sympathy… their blend and tonal luster is near perfection, and this album, with its glorious cathedral-like surround sound is a perfect foundation recording for music of the pre-reformation English church.
Steven Ritter, Audiophile Audition (31 January, 2007)
The singing is amazing… Stile Antico creates an intensity of forward musical motion that is breath-taking… a virtual manual on how to sing music from this era.
James L. Queen, American Choral Journal (May 2007)
The singing is simply extraordinary… surely one of the best early music recordings of the year. It will certainly have pride of place on many a shelf.
Steven Plank, Opera Today (19 September, 2007)
On its first recording for Harmonia Mundi, the young British vocal ensemble Stile Antico reaches the very highest level. Their performance achieves a perfect balance between polyphonic clarity and sense of colour. Breathing as one, the members of Stile Antico give an ideal luminosity to their singing… Indispensable.
Jean-Jacques Millo, Opus Haute Définition (30 January, 2007)
This is a beautiful disc, rendered with dignity, purity, and understanding.
Jay Nordlinger, New York Sun (16 January, 2007)
The members of Stile Antico demonstrate the immaculate ensemble work and balance of better-known groups — remarkably, since they sing without a conductor — but their sound is richer and more deeply hued.
David Weininger, The Boston Globe (16 March, 2007)
The singing is staggeringly beautiful, the balance meticulous.
SP, The Sunday Times (18 February, 2007)
- Sheppard: Libera nos I & II
- Plainsong: Salva Nos Domine
- Byrd: Christe, qui lux es et dies
- Sheppard: In pace in idipsum
- Tallis: In manus tuas
- Sheppard: Jesu, salvator saeculi, verbum
- Sheppard: In manus tuas I
- Sheppard: In manus tuas II & III
- Plainsong: Miserere mihi, Domine
- Tallis: Miserere nostri, Domine
- Byrd: Miserere mihi, Domine
- Tallis: In pace in idipsum
- White: Christe, qui lux es et dies
- Plainsong: Veni, Domine
- Byrd: Nunc dimittis
- Tallis: Te lucis ante terminum
- Aston: Gaude, virgo mater Christi