Most of the Proms I've been to have been remarkable. Most were selected because they were expected to be. And one that will remain in the memory for as long as any was The Sixteen who performed Robert Wylkynson's Jesu autem transiens. that builds from the solo voice to 13 before reducing back to one.
It is given a further very welcome outing here by Tonus Peregrinus in among other late C15th and early C16th pieces from the Eton Choirbook which we might suppose was a sort of pre-Reformation Now That's What I Call Music compilation although I do hope others will find a more appropriate parallel than that.
It is in Wylkynson most particularly that we might think we hear the coming of Thomas Tallis and Spem in Alium a few generations later with its woven texture and surge of activity. This release would be worth the purchase if that was all it contained but there is over 70 minutes worth of music preceding it, too.
Walter Lambe's Nasciens mater for five voices is lambent when lambency seems very much the desired effect since the text succinctly tells us the remarkable story that, 'Not knowing a man, the virgin mother without pain gave birth to the Saviour of the ages'.
As was previously celebrated on the Naxos recording of the Oxford Camerata's Spem a few years ago, the recording here is exceptional, Richard Davy's St. Matthew Passion not much like Bach's but with rich solo parts emerging from the plainchant structure and John Browne's Stabat Mater a plaintive grief from which, of course, redemption comes.
It seems a long time ago since Naxos began with their range of budget discs, many by artists you might not have heard of. They have come a long way since then but still don't charge the earth for their product. Just for once, I wish they had. I'd have gladly paid more if the tiny black and white reproductions of pages from the songbook had been full-page and in colour. But the music is in colour, I can promise you that, and I'm not even synaesthetic.
