This year, The Sixteen's annual choral pilgrimage is devoted to the music of Flanders in the 15th and 16th centuries. The round-Britain tour begins in April, but this CD duplicates the works by the three greatest Flemish composers Harry Christopher's choir will be performing live. Motets by Josquin alternate with pieces by Orlande de Lassus (two of his Magnificats and two motets) and with the Gloria and Sanctus from Antoine Brumel's Missa Et Ecce Terraemotus. It's all music that has been chosen for the vividness of its response to the texts – whether it's the trembling exchanges of Brumel's Earthquake Mass, the monumentality of Josquin's Praeter Rerum Serium, or the disorientating chromatic sideslips of Lassus's Timor et Tremor. The Sixteen plot all these musical sleights of hand with great precision and suaveness, even if the results are a little too polished and controlled; there's surely more guts to this music, more earthiness to its rhythms, than these performances admit.