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Song of Songs

Classic FM Magazine awards ‘Editors Choice’

RJ, Classic FM Magazine (April 2009)

This stunning recording of Biblical love poetry is the third disc from the undirected 12 young British singers of Stile Antico – one of our Top Five Choral Groups. The music is exclusively 16th century and the texts are all by King Solomon. the singers enter Palestrina’s Nigra sum (‘I am black) in slow caressing waves until their sound becomes a lover’s smothering embrace. The soprano’s sinuous plainchant on the same words is without blemish. There is no hurry in the ensemble’s tonguing of Palestrina’s Osculetur me (‘Kiss me’), the consonants heard as vivid word-painting, and their rising scales in Victoria’s Vidi speciosam (‘I saw beauty’) are as heady, erotic odours.