(D Lamentations de la Renaissance Huelgas Ensemble I Paul van Nevel.

Harmonia Munch ® CD HMC90 1682 (69 minutes: DDD). Texts and translations included.

Lassus: Lamentationes Hieremiae - De lamentatione Jeremiae Prophetae: Qui comparabo te?; Ego vir videns.

Massaino: Musica super Threnos leremiae prophete in maiori hebdomada decantadas. De Orto: Lamentatio Jeremie Prophete. White: Lamentations.

Renaissance music for the Tenebrae constitutes an endless fund of passionate and evocative polyphony. The nature and design of the texts beautifully articulates the music, alternating the single letter that opens each section with more expansive music for the Lamentations proper and ending with the words 'Jerusalem, convertere ad

Dominum Deum tuum'. There is no clear explanation why Paul van Nevel chose these four particular settings, but they do show some of the range of styles adopted across the years, opening with the little-known set by Tiburtio Massaino (published in 1599) and ending with the superb Good Friday set that is among the last works of Lassus.

The group of ten nicely balanced singers works particularly well in those two sets. The top voices are taken by performers with a splendidly directed sense of line; and the firm basses give a clear shape to the harmonic designs. Everything is magnificently controlled, avoiding the excesses that the texts might be thought to invite and concentrating on the clarity of the polyphony.

The very different and far more angular music of Robert White is not so securely done: though some of the dissonances are superbly caught, there are also rather too many nervous moments, as though the singers had not fully absorbed the music. And for the early set by Marbrianus de Orto they rather confuse the design by including an instrumental group: the players are wonderful, but the varied scoring does less than full justice to the formal strength of this still severely underperformed composer: while it is wonderful to have some music by de Orto on disc, somehow one cannot help feeling that he deserved a better chance than this. OF