‘Throughout this album Cinquecento are at the top of their game. Stylistically speaking, I would suggest similarities with The Hilliard Ensemble; the rich meld of lower voices creates a stable core to their performances and the subtle individuality of their voices allows for polyphonic details to be heard clearly at all times. Their countertenor, Terry Wey, is superb throughout, bringing a graceful ease to the top line. They have chosen to record in a generous acoustic which, despite warming their sound, does not obscure any of the finer details. The Mass is particularly attention-grabbing since it comprises many sections for three or four voices which are so skilfully managed that the full six-voice textures, when they occur, feel like a warm embrace. What I admire most from Cinquecento, though, is their sense of polyphonic momentum and on this album in particular they find a perfect balance of long-range phrasing with surface detail. The result is a sonically beautiful performance that holds my attention’ (Gramophone)

‘The six pan-European singers of Cinquecento spin Isaac's lines with real beauty and subtlety of phrasing, bringing a lustrous glow to the polyphony … the recording places them perfectly in the acoustic as well. Timeless polyphony’ (BBC Record Review)» More

‘Cinquecento make an incredibly persuasive case for this repertoire … the singing is first-rate … the ensemble is fantastic and as you go from the Josquin into the Isaac it’s like walking from a baptistery into an amazing Gothic nave—the sunlight pours in. It’s a wonderful, wonderful disc … such a joy’ (BBC Record Review)» More

‘Cinquecento’s best recording since Palestrina’s second book of Lamentations (Hyperion CDA68284) and one cannot praise it more highly than that … admirers of Cinquecento will find themselves rewarded as never before by this recording. Admirers of Isaac who do not know this music, especially the mass, will find their admiration confirmed and perhaps even expanded. Explorers unacquainted with Isaac will discover a new musical territory replete with riches’ (Early Music Review)» More

‘The ideal introduction to Isaac’s music. Not only is the Wohlauff Mass one of his most imposing and sonically splendid settings, as David J Burn notes in the booklet—itself well up to Hyperion’s high standards—the shorter works also add to the value of this very welcome release. As for the performances, I need add little to the praise of Cinquecento—see Dominy Clements’ review of their Palestrina [CDA68284]—while the recording, which I downloaded in 24/96 format, is equally first-rate’ (MusicWeb International)

‘Cinquecento is a group of six men who have been mostly devoting themselves for a number of years to rare Renaissance repertoire. Isaac has often been recorded in recent times but this, his longest and most demanding mass, is, I believe, heard here for the first time … [Sive vivamus] is a short motet but one I have returned to a few times. It begins homophonically and then falls into delicious rolling counterpoint … Parce, Domine, populo tuo is a simple, short and beautiful motet in four parts … [Judaea et Jerusalem] makes a wonderful ending to the disc … the booklet is up to Hyperion’s normal excellent standard with all texts given in clear translations. The recording is rather close but there is a sense of the lovely seventeenth century Charterhouse complex in which the group was luckily enough to able to record’ (MusicWeb International)» More

‘A really rather overwhelming experience. Each line is given clarity by the single voice to a part Cinquecento, but the blending of sonorities in the whole make for wonderful listening, with waves of collective voices and the emergence and receding of individual lines creating something truly glorious … such illumination would not be possible without the superb voices of Cinquecento, and Hyperion’s excellent recording, which is perfectly balanced in a spacious acoustic, but close enough for that all-important clarity of diction and line to be communicated without any need to strain the senses’ (MusicWeb International)» More