Paul van Nevel has done it again. He has a rare gift of nosing out little-recorded composers, and convincing you that the neglect is wholly undeserved.

Paul van Nevel has done it again. Whether it is Gombert (Sony, 4/93) or Brumel (5/91), Gallus or Pipelare (10/96), he has a rare gift of nosing out little-recorded composers, and convincing you that the neglect is wholly undeserved. This time he brings us Pierre de Manchicourt, another FrancoFlemish composer working (like Gombert) in the Hapsburg orbit during the mid-sixteenth century. I've mentioned Gombert a couple of times already, and if there was ever a "What next?" feature based on his music, Manchicourt would certainly get a mention. Like Gombert, he favours thick textures (six voices being the norm) in which all the parts are active most of the time. Then again, his imitative practice is slightly less restrictive than Gombert's, and his melodic lines are more florid. Paul van Nevel himself calls them "flamboyant", and links Manchicourt's style with late gothic architecture.

Within a highly circumscribed idiom, Manchicourt negotiates the differing demands of Mass, motet and chanson most skilfully. The 0 three songs recorded here are particularly lovely, and there are real finds among the motets: Uwequo piger dortnies sets a weird biblical text exhorting layabouts to take example from the industrious ant. As for the disc's centrepiece, the Mass Veni &Mae Spiritus, it is a superb example of late Franco-Flemish handiwork at its most involving.

Of the performances, I need only say that they represent the Huelgas Ensemble at their most beguiling, with fewer eccentricities than usual — a worthy companion to the previous recordings I mentioned earlier, and beautifully captured by Sony's engineering team.

-- Gramophone [1/1998]