10 Dec Musicweb International – top seasonal recommendation
The initial review: This is the only one of these Christmas offerings that I could bring myself to hear in mid-October – too early for the holly and the mistletoe. If I say that it’s everything that I expected from the resuscitated Gothic Voices, that’s high praise indeed. Without checking, I don’t think there’s anything here that hasn’t been included on other recordings of medieval English Christmas fare, but, while I can think of several other very worthwhile collections of such material, none of them is better done than this, so it’s likely to be my top seasonal recommendation this year. (Autumn 2019 round-up)
The main review: This has to be my Advent and Christmas choice this year. A confirmed fan of the Gothic Voices
in their earlier incarnation when they recorded for Hyperion – recordings which are still available and well worth investigating, though some are download or Archive Service CD only – I was delighted when they re-formed and began recording for Linn. As of old, they eschew dressing the music up for a modern audience: there are just four first-rate voices at play here, with no cornetts, sackbutts or even an organ, and the results are as pure and perfect as on those earlier recordings. Only those in search of folksy ‘jolly japes’ will be disappointed. As an English specialist, Christopher Page kept the Voices on track diction- and pronunciation-wise and the new team are no less accurate in that respect. I take their French style ‘u’s in the Latin texts on trust. The new Voices, however, are not clones of the old: they now take a broader view of the Power Sanctus than their predecessors on The Service of Venus and Mars (CDH55290 – review – review). The recording is very good and Julian Podger’s notes in the booklet are very nearly the equal of those which Page contributed to the Hyperion series. (5 December 2019)
