Review: The Cardinall's Musick finished 2010 in a blaze of glory with their Gramophone Recording of the Year award for the last volume of their Byrd Edition. Only the second time in thirty years that an Early Music recording has received this prestigious accolade, it is a fitting tribute to the soaring artistry of the group and their director, Andrew Carwood. Their eagerly-awaited next disc features music from late sixteenth-century Rome and ranges from Allegri's Miserere, surely the best-known and best-loved work of this period, to a rarely-performed or recorded oddity. Seven Roman musicians came together (or were brought together) to write a Mass-setting where they each contributed different sections. The resulting work, the twelve-voice Missa Cantantibus organis, is a tribute both to Cecilia (the patron saint of music) and to Palestrina. The seven composers each take themes found in Palestrina's motet of the same name and use them as the starting point for their new compositions. Palestrina himself is among the seven, with Giovanni Andrea Dragoni, Ruggiero Giovannelli, Curzio Mancini, Prospero Santini, Francesco Soriano and Annibale Stabile being the other six. All seven composers were prominent maestri in Rome and most appear to have had contact with Palestrina either as choristers or pupils.

Songlist: Salve regina, Kyrie eleison (Missa Cantatibus organis), Christie eleison, Kyrie eleison, Gloria, Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Qui tollis peccata mundi, Credo, Crucifixus, Et ascendit in caelum, Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, De lamentatione Jeremiae prophetae, Miserere mei, Deus, Incipit lamentatio Jeremiae prophetae, Cantantibus organis, Gustate et videte

Review: The Byrd Edition is a long-term project that is one of the most comprehensive ever undertaken in the early music field: some 20 CDs that will cover the complete works of William Byrd. The music will be freshly edited and sources re-examined by David Skinner. The Cardinall's Musick under Andrew Carwood has gained a formidable reputation in bringing the neglected masterworks of the English Renaissance to a wider public. These have included the festal Masses of Ludford and the complete works of Fayrfax, the excellence of which was recognized by the winning of a prestigious Gramophone Award. The whole project is divided between the Latin Church Music, the Secular Songs and Consort Music, and the English Church Music. Volume 1 is the first of the Latin Church Music discs, which provides a chronological survey of Byrd's surviving Latin motets to the Cantiones Sacrae of 1591, interspersed with a liturgical survey of the Gradualia. Thus this first CD includes the Gradualia propers for Lady Mass in Advent, the Lamentations, the exquisite penitential motet Peccavi super numerum and the great 9-part psalm setting for men's voices Domine quis habitabit.

Songlist: Domine Quis Habitabit, Omni Tempore Benedic Deum, Christe Redemptor Omnium, Sermone Blando, Miserere, Ne Perdas cum Impiis, De Lamentatione Jeremiae Prophetae, Rorate Caeli, Tollite Portas / Ave Maria, Ecce Virgo, Alma Redemptoris Mater, Christe qui lux es (a5), Christe qui lux es (a4), Sanctus, Audivi Vocem de Caelo, Vide Dominum Quoniam Tribulor, Peccavi Super Numerum