Josquin: Masses - De beata virgine / Ave maris stella

"The Tallis Scholars here achieve an extraordinary clarity of diction, line and texure that leans more towards explication rather than expression. That they get away with it is down to a sophisticated sense of word-painting that grows as much out of the tensions created by the complexity of the music as the meaning of the texts."
(International Record Review)

"theirs is a performance one wants to listen to many times...For my own part I'm happy to live with the women's voices (I mean: what voices!) and a certain sameness in the interpretations for the absolute clarity, the absolute efficiency, the certainty that nobody is messing around with you. These are authoritative performances that can stand the test of time."
(Gramophone Award Finalist 2012 - Early Music)

The Tallis Scholars have been performing the music of Josquin regularly in concert for nearly 25 years.

Their 1986 CD of the Missa Pange lingua was the first recording of Early Music to win the Gramophone Record of the Year Award and their 2009 CD of the Missa Malheur me bat was nominated for a Grammy.

This new release is the fifth CD in The Tallis Scholars' projected Complete Josquin Mass Cycle.