Stephen Rice and the Brabant Ensemble - New discs

The Mouton disc, released on 1 June, is The Brabant Ensemble’s tenth on the Hyperion label. It features the composer’s only five-voice Mass setting, Missa Tu es Petrus, newly edited by Dr Rice, as well as motets including all of the eight-voice music securely attributed to Mouton. Details, texts, liner notes, and soundclips are available on the Hyperion website.

This summer The Brabant Ensemble will record two more discs, also for Hyperion. The first is of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525/6-94), perhaps the most famous of Renaissance composers but one whose vast output remains to be fully explored in recordings. In 2011 The Brabant Ensemble was invited to the Utrecht Festival Oude Muziek to perform Palestrina’s early Mass (published 1554) based on the plainsong hymn Ad coenam Agni providi, and this Mass setting will be recorded alongside motets and Offertories for Eastertide. Later in the summer the ensemble will return to the specialism for which it is best known - music by less well-known Franco-Flemish composers - with a CD of music by Cipriano de Rore (c1510-65). Rore is famous as a madrigalist, but his sacred music is rarely heard despite being of outstanding quality. The Brabant Ensemble will record two five-voice Masses, both based on French chansons: Sandrin’s famous Doulce mémoire, and Rore’s own Tout ce qu’on peut en elle voir (this Mass setting is also known as Missa a note negre due to the small (hence black) note values in which it is written.