Now a decade old, having started as students, the 12-strong ensemble Stile Antico has produced another pure-voiced, imaginatively programmed disc with this selection of mostly German Renaissance carols and motets. Some are familiar: the tune in Michael Praetorius’s Es ist ein Ros entsprungen surfaced in the English Christmas hymn A Great and Mighty Wonder. There’s also a version of In dulci jubilo by (no relation) Hieronymus Praetorius. The magnificent Missa Pastores by the Flemish Clemens non Papa provides the backbone. Mirabile mysterium, by the Slovene Jacob Handl, full of scorching dissonances and falling chromaticisms, fittingly gives the album its title.
