JOSQUIN DESPREZ: MOTETS Orlando Consort Archiv 463 473 -2 £££ Inviolata, integra (à 5), De profundis clamavi (à 5), O virgo virginum (à 6), Vultum tuum deprecabuntur (cycle à 4), Huc me sydereo (à 5), O Virgo prudentissima (à 6) etc.; recorded 1999; TPT 70' 51

Crystal-clear and sensitively-shaped recordings from the Orlando Consort, a disc no lover of Renaissance polyphony will want to be without.

It's 'cards on the table time'. I have not always been a great admirer of the Orlando Consort, finding several of their earlier discs worthy but dull. Meticulous preparation has never been in doubt, and the group has regularly sought the assistance of foremost scholars to establish best possible performing texts, and leading authorities in fields such as early pronunciation. Tuning, whether Pythagorean, just intonation or whatever, is invariably immaculate. But none of the above needs necessarily produce results which communicate involvement with, let alone love for, the music being performed. Happily, I do here sense those elusive ingredients, and this disc has a great deal to commend it. For a start, the selection of motets itself is rather skilfully made. Some are fairly familiar, such as the opening Inviolata, in which the triple invocations of the third section (O benigna, O regina, O Maria) unfold beautifully prior to the florid, sweeping melodic lines falling away to the final cadence. The relatively static setting of De profundis has also been recorded several times, but its dense textures have rarely sounded more appropriately dark. There is no Mass Ordinary here to provide substantial focus, but instead a sequence of seven motets, comparable with the replacement cycles favoured in late fifteenth-century Milan, constitutes its central section. It is good to have this less familiar material; all is well-crafted, though not consistently 'top drawer' stuff. Mente tota ends with the transparent texture of duets so characteristic of Josquin, while the final Ora pro nobis burns a rather higher octane fuel than has prevailed earlier in the cycle (the Ave Maria, gratia plena, it might be added, is not the more familiar setting).

These are crystal clear and sensitively-shaped readings, with one voice per part, recalling the approach of the Hilliard Ensemble. A side-by-side comparison of the lament on the death of Ockeghem, Nymphes des bois, reveals much in common, with the Hilliards achieving an extra gravitas thanks to a dangerously slow tempo. There is still room in your record collection for Josquin motets in more luxurious accounts, and a choral approach may be sampled from Oxbridge colleges with boys' voices, or from specialist choirs such as the Tallis Scholars. Many of us grew up with the conviction that the later fifteenth century witnessed the birth of choral polyphony, and such an approach has not lost its power to persuade. However, the two six-voice motets on offer here, with just six singers, are utterly convincing. Each is quite different, though each a model of pacing on the composer's part. O Virgo prudentissima is extremely economical in its use of the full complement of voices, its fluid counterpoint dependent for much of its duration on the exchange of various duet combinations. The highlight of the disc is O Virgo virginum, cast in like mould to the widely available Praeter rerum seriem (not included here). The mood and overall architecture, each proceeding towards an infectious tripla ultimately held in check by a broader duple-time section, are similar. Here it is low versus high voice trios which form the memorable sonority; witness the thrilling passage at the words "nec primam similem visa est", especially the mounting sequence in the lower voices. This is singing of a very special order, contributing to a disc no lover of Renaissance polyphony will want to be without.

Peter Syrus