Des Prés: Masses Di Dadi / Une Mousse Biscaye – Tallis Scholars

   in Early Music Today (Dec, 2016)
Why bother to review a new recording from The Tallis Scholars? You know just what you’ll find – damn near perfection (how startling is any tiny blemish!) in tuning, balance, phrasing, blend, pacing, dynamic range – and anything else you care to mention.

Well, for one thing, maintaining such quality can never be taken for granted. Meeting expectations, not least in complex and demanding repertoire such as this, is immensely taxing. Reputation brings pressure. More than that, this latest volume in the Tallis Scholars’ survey of the Josquin Masses adds to the accumulation of evidence demonstrating in modern times what the composer’s contemporaries knew only too well: that here was a …