Search - Nicolas Gombert, Josquin Desprez, Orlande de Lassus :: Heavenly Spheres (L'Harmonie des Spheres)

If you heard this record in a blind test, you'd probably guess it was Philippe Herreweghe's European Vocal Ensemble or midcareer Tallis Scholars (before their immaculate singing took on a glassy-eyed chill). Surely a choir from some European hotbed of early music like... Montreal?! Yes, indeed. Christopher Jackson and his Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal have been quietly working away up north for years; only in the late 1990s have they been making commercial recordings in a big way. Each one of these discs is better than the last: the group's Palestrina/Victoria release of 1998 and this anthology make a marvelous introduction to the a cappella sacred music of the Renaissance. Jackson and his choir capture the limpid reverence of Josquin's Inviolata and the thick richness of Mouton's Nesciens mater, the melancholy of Gombert's Musae Jovis and the cheer of Victoria's Vidi speciosam, and the combination of all those qualities in Gombert's Tulerunt Dominum meum and Palestrina's Salve Regina for four high voices. What's more, they do it with the same clarity of line and beauty of tone that made the Tallis Scholars world famous. May they have similar success. --Matthew Westphal