Stile Antico: From the Imperial Court review – marvellously varied and powerful music

The antique style of the conductorless choir Stile Antico is now familiar: impeccably tuned, carefully moulded, beautifully presented singing of intelligently planned anthologies. This latest brings together music for the Hapsburg court, from Heinrich Isaac, composer to Maximilian I from 1497, to Alonso Lobo’s funeral motet for Philip II in 1598. It’s stretching a point to include Tallis, but there is marvellously varied and powerful music here – more so than the rather uniform declamation suggests. Even at moments of great fervour like the climax of Nicolas Gombert’s Magnificat, the feeling is cool. It makes you wonder: would this music have ever sounded this polite?