This well-filled disc (77 minutes) was recorded in what was formerly a Pumping Station built in 1880 and located in the ancient convent of Barbadinhos in Lisbon. The building is laid out in three open storeys and, on the evidence of this disc, proves an ideal recording venue for smallish choirs such as the Huelgas Ensemble. Paul van Nevel talks of an “invisible alchemy of place and acoustic” lending these performances the potency of the legendary “fifth essence” or quinta essentia – an extravagant claim perhaps, but borne out by the quality of the music-making. The acoustic possesses a reasonable degree of resonance but also extreme clarity, which enhances the sensuous sonorities of Lassus, the soaring polyphony of Ashewell and the sublime fluidity of Palestrina. Here we have Renaissance choral music in a nutshell, with two great but very different European contemporaries flanking the English composer Thomas Ashewell from a generation earlier. (Ashewell died sometime after 1513, before Lassus or Palestrina were born, having by then become cantor at Durham cathedral.) Only two complete works of Ashewell are extant, but this flamboyant six-part setting based on the Gregorian Ave Maria shows just how skilled English Gothic composers could be. The polyphony is florid and melodic, soaring, often fast-moving, with contrasting sections for as few as three parts, sometimes scored for upper voices, sometimes for lower voices. There are many colliding false relations (notably absent from the later works featured here) and a degree of rhythmic complexity that rivals the melodic invention. The stirring splendour of the Lassus mass, based on Gombert’s polyphonic chanson Tous les regretz, is a rewarding contrast, with an unusually fast and intricate Hosanna at the end of the Sanctus. The Palestrina mass is that built on the six-note scale figure ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la. It has the poised, meditative quality associated with much of Palestrina’s output, the phrases unfolding like warm velvet. Van Nevel’s astute direction results in flowing and characterful performances, and his succinct booklet essay is most helpful.

Reviewed by Anne McAlister