Allegri, Anerio, Dragoni, Giovannelli, Mancini, Palestrina, Santini, Soriano and Stabile

The Cardinall's Musick/Andrew Carwood

Hyperion CDA67860

A feast of sacred music from late sixteenth-century Rome, all the composers prominent maestri in Rome, most of them in contact with Palestrina.

Seven composers contributed to a twelve-voice Missa Cantantibus Organis, a reminder that throughout history "great" composers have lived and worked amongst a galaxy of others who became eclipsed for centuries and now, in the 21st Century, are enjoying posthumous reappraisal and being heard thanks to the the proliferation of specialist groups and record labels.

Prepared with Andrew Carwood's dedicated scholarship, and brought to life by his singers in a superb recording made at St Alban's, Holborn, this is a recording to be enjoyed at many levels.

For the "ordinary listener", enough to revel in the sumptuous sound throughout and enjoy a new realisation of the iconic Allegri Miserere with its famous (possibly inauthentic) high Cs.

Peter Grahame Woolf