Les messes à teneur

"I love all of these approaches with a slight preference for the drama produced by adding instruments. This is an astonishingly well-filled disc and so it's probably best to keep versions of all sorts if you have the space and enjoy the differences between what amounts to a British approach and a Continental one".

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"Dufay var 1400-tallets største komponist. Han har bygget messen op omkring sin egen melodi, Se la face ay pale, der fungerer som cantus firmus. Cd'en synges af Diabolus in Musica, et fransk ensemble på otte herrer, som er et meget interessant bekendtskab. I stedet for den glatte klang hos de engelske ensembler, der dominerer middelalderrepertoiret, hører man her mere nasale, brægende stemmer".

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"Vurdering: Editor's choice" - "This is a red-letter day: at last we have uniform and sensible recordings of the four great cantus firmus Masses that are more or less all we have from the last 20 or so years of Dufay's life ...These are all top-rate singers with pure and excellently focused voices: every one of them appears here as a soloist in one of the duet sections, and the intonation and ensemble are beyond reproach ... There are many other recordings of all these works, but surely all serious collectors will want this issue of all four works, beautifully sung, beautifully recorded, beautifully presented and always exhilarating".

"Vurdering: Diapason d'or".

"Though not my first choice [Se la face ay pale], this account has a directness and unaffected efficiency that is highly enjoyable, making it a worthwhile foil to Diabolus in Musica's account ... The rest of the programme consists of songs and motets spanning the whole of Dufay's long career. These reissues are indeed welcome".

"What the Binchois Consort do here sounds both transparent and natural. The balance is superb; and all lines are presented in a free and supple manner that projects the music very well. This is easy, effortless musicianship".

"The Consort sounds like a group of individuals, confident in their audience's connoisseurship and their own and the composer's technical prowess rather than a group of worshippers. Ultimately, my preference remains with the somewhat richer sonorities and warmer tone of Diabolus [Alpha 051]".

"Diabolus in Musica's rich and complex sonorities and the sense of joy mingled with solemnity in its approach to the work contrast strongly in the comparatively blander Hilliards. Chiaroscuro's more pungent sound and vigorious pacing made its reading more appeling, but it is surpassed by Diabolus In Musica's magesterial and subtly handled account".