Various: Music from the Eton Choirbook – review

Recordings of music from this rich pre-Reformation source have been made both with female voices (the Sixteen) and boy trebles (Oxford's Christ Church Cathedral Choir). This new collection from the 14 mixed voices of Tonus Peregrinus is exceptionally successful and sonorous, and includes a five-part Magnificat by Hugh Kellyk, previously unrecorded. The elaboration of the part-writing is dauntingly complex and can sound unvaried, but the incomplete chant-based Matthew Passion by Richard Davy makes a strong centrepiece, while for sheer contrapuntal virtuosity you cannot beat the oddest piece, the final 13-part canon by Robert Wylkynson.