High praise in The Times

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High praise in The Times

Richard Morrison, The Times (13 May, 2025)

It doesn’t seem long ago that Stile Antico were the new kids on the block, challenging established professional choirs with a revolutionary tactic: no conductor at the front deciding how everything should sound.

In fact, it’s been 20 years since Stile Antico gave the first of its 600 concerts to date. This Wigmore Hall programme was an epic celebration of that anniversary. Stretched over nearly three hours, it comprised 14 substantial Renaissance pieces, two commissioned works and onstage interviews with all 12 current members by Radio 3’s Hannah French…

Interspersed with the banter, however, was much wonderfully nuanced singing… What’s most impressive, however, is this ensemble’s way of emphasising structure by small but distinctive pauses marking important cadences, as if with a silent semi-colon. That doesn’t just require collective musical intelligence but also the near-telepathic understanding that comes from years of collaboration without that controlling figure in the middle.

Read the full article at The Times.