Brabant Ensemble

Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina: Missa Ad coenam Agni (2013)

Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina: Missa Ad coenam Agni (2013)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 286 Mb | Total time: 70:37 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Hyperion | CDA67978 | Recorded: 2012

The Brabant Ensemble, better known for uncovering works by forgotten composers such as Dominique de Phinot, turns to a giant of the Renaissance—perhaps the most celebrated name of the period. Yet within Palestrina’s huge output there are many hidden gems, lacking both recordings and modern performing editions, and it is from among these that the ensemble’s director Stephen Rice has chosen the repertoire for this album. A Mass—Missa Ad coenam Agni, from Palestrina’s first book of Mass-settings—is included, plus antiphons, motets and five Eastertide Offertories. Each work is, as Stephen Rice states in his typically informative booklet notes, ‘a finely crafted addition to the liturgy’.
Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Orlande de Lassus: Prophetiae Sibyllarum (2011)

Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Orlande de Lassus: Prophetiae Sibyllarum (2011)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 336 Mb | Total time: 74:14 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Hyperion | CDA67887 | Recorded: 2010

Orlande de Lassus was an undisputed master of all the vocal genres of the late Renaissance, from German Lied to Latin Mass. He was extraordinarily prolific, and this recording features the glorious polyphony of the Missa Amor ecco colei and Prophetiae Sibyllarum, one of his most celebrated works. With the latter’s extreme chromaticism and constant modulation, Lassus stretched the compositional boundaries of the time to produce one of the most important and advanced works to come from the sixteenth century.
Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Pierre de La Rue: Missa Nuncqua fue pena mayor & Missa Inviolata (2016)

Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Pierre de La Rue: Missa Nuncqua fue pena mayor & Missa Inviolata (2016)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 348 Mb | Total time: 78'55 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Hyperion | CDA68150 | Recorded: 2015

Pierre de la Rue is another of those composers who contributed so prolifically to the richness of musical life in the Low Countries during the late fifteenth century. If today he is less well known than some of his contemporaries, the distinguished advocacy of Stephen Rice and The Brabant Ensemble should do much to redress the balance.
Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Music from the Chirk Castle Part-Books (2009)

Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Music from the Chirk Castle Part-Books (2009)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 295 Mb | Total time: 71'04 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Hyperion | CDA67695 | Recorded: 2008

This disc presents a selection of works from the Chirk Castle part-books, a fascinating collection of devotional music from the Tudor period that remained hidden in the castle library for three hundred years.
The Chirk manuscripts contain works for unaccompanied voices as well as verse anthems and services, scored for solo voices, chorus and organ. This recording focuses on the unaccompanied items, presenting for the first time a selection of the ‘full’ services and anthems found in the manuscripts, including seven unique to the Chirk collection.
Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Josquin: Motets & Mass Movements (2021)

Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Josquin: Motets & Mass Movements (2021)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 345 Mb | Total time: 78:38 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Hyperion | # CDA68321 | Recorded: 2020

Biographical and musicological certainties may be in short supply in the life and work of Josquin, but there's no gainsaying the magnificence of the music. This program of shorter works, from The Brabant Ensemble and Stephen Rice, most in unusual guise, celebrates his 500th anniversary.
Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Dominque Phinot: Missa Si bona suscepimus, Lamentations, Magnificat, Motets (2009)

Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Dominque Phinot: Missa Si bona suscepimus, Lamentations, Magnificat, Motets (2009)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 276 Mb | Total time: 74:13 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Hyperion | # CDA67696 | Recorded: 2008

The young Oxford choir turns its immaculate ensemble, lucid diction and faultless tuning to an exciting find: a hugely neglected composer from the 16th century. Relatively little is known about Dominique Phinot’s life—there is a suggestion that he was executed for homosexual practices, cutting short a productive and impressive composing career. Phinot’s output consists of over a hundred motets, two Masses, and settings of Vesper Psalms and the Magnificat, as well as two books of French chansons and two Italian madrigals.
Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Hellinck: Missa Surrexit pastor; Lupi: Te Deum & motets (2020)

Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Hellinck: Missa Surrexit pastor; Lupi: Te Deum & motets (2020)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 294 Mb | Total time: 70:39 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Hyperion | CDA68304 | Recorded: 2019

Mining the rich musical seam of the Low Countries, Stephen Rice and The Brabant Ensemble have once again unearthed sixteenth-century treasure in the works of Lupus Hellinck and Johannes Lupi.
Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Cipriano De Rore: Missa Doulce mémoire, Missa a note negre (2013)

Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Cipriano De Rore: Missa Doulce mémoire, Missa a note negre (2013)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 324 Mb | Total time: 74:36 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Hyperion | CDA67913 | Recorded: 2012

The Brabant Ensemble continue their investigation into unknown jewels of the Low Countries Renaissance, researched by their director Stephen Rice and recorded with equal amounts of passion and erudition by the young singers of the group.
Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Antoine de Févin: Missa Ave Maria & Missa Salve sancta parens (2018)

Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Antoine de Févin: Missa Ave Maria & Missa Salve sancta parens (2018)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 326 Mb | Total time: 79:13 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Hyperion | CDA68265 | Recorded: 2018

An important contribution to our understanding of the ‘gentle master musician.’ Stephen Rice brings perceptive musical insights to these accounts, and also sheds light on Févin’s idiom in the excellent CD booklet. His vocal ensemble may be slender but the singing is robust and buoyantly articulated. Boyish upper voices offset velvety tenors and basses, and the relatively close recording perspective produces a sound at once lucid and lustrous.
Stephen Rice,  The Brabant Ensemble - Clemens Non Papa: Behold, How Joyful (2004)

Stephen Rice, The Brabant Ensemble - Clemens Non Papa: Behold, How Joyful (2004)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 312 Mb | Total time: 70:54 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Sygnum | SIGCD045 | Recorded: 2003

Like many of even the most prolific and celebrated composers of the sixteenth century, Jacobus Clemens non Papa (‘not the Pope’) has offered the history books little factual material with which to work. In contrast to the paucity of biographical material, however, many sources of Clemens' music survive. Indeed, he is one of the most widely published musicians of the entire century with fifteen Masses, over two hundred motets, many Dutch psalms and French chansons to his name.