Nicholas Kenyon 

Stile Antico: From the Imperial Court review – marvellously varied and powerful music

Stile Antico are as impeccable as ever in this music for the Hapsburg court, writes Nicholas Kenyon
  
  


The antique style of the conductorless choir Stile Antico is now familiar: impeccably tuned, carefully moulded, beautifully presented singing of intelligently planned anthologies. This latest brings together music for the Hapsburg court, from Heinrich Isaac, composer to Maximilian I from 1497, to Alonso Lobo’s funeral motet for Philip II in 1598. It’s stretching a point to include Tallis, but there is marvellously varied and powerful music here – more so than the rather uniform declamation suggests. Even at moments of great fervour like the climax of Nicolas Gombert’s Magnificat, the feeling is cool. It makes you wonder: would this music have ever sounded this polite?

 

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