Gothic Voices’ eagerly awaited new album features music from The Old Hall Manuscript: a wonderful collection of classy compositions from late fourteenth- to early fifteenth-century England. It embodies the English ‘flavour’ of music of the time, with its smooth melodies and sweet harmonies, irresistible to Franco-Flemish composers writing a generation or so later, and known by them as the ‘Contenance Angloise’. This highly expressive and quirky music, ranging in atmosphere from gently suave strains to high-octane cascades of sound, benefits from the gorgeous acoustics of Boxgrove Priory. English music by Cooke, Power, Pycard and Dunstable is answered by Burgundian composers Dufay, Lymburgia and Binchois, thus demonstrating the influence of said English Countenance, and hearing its echoes in the response. This is Gothic Voices’ fourth album for Linn following its first recording of mediaeval Christmas music, Nowell synge we bothe al and som, and two thematic programmes, The Dufay Spectacle and Mary Star Of The Sea, each of which received widespread critical acclaim.

Gothic Voices’ reputation for the originality of its programming is cemented with its first recording of medieval Christmas music, in which Julian Podger reimagines a fifteenth-century carol evening. Mirroring the modern practice of performing mostly music from the preceding centuries alongside some contemporary repertoire, the programme includes late medieval English carols, chant, mono-and polyphonic songs and motets for the Advent and Christmas season, focusing on Mary, her Annunciation and the birth of Jesus. Larger-scale festive motets and mass movements by English late medieval celebrities John Dunstaple and Leonel Power also feature.