'The performances here are beautifully expressive and animated while at the same time poised and flawlessly balanced.'
American Record Guide
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Total running time: 72 minutes.
The exceptional viol quartet Phantasm, whose debut won a Gramophone Award, returns with an equally ravishing recording of the repertoire in which they excel, from the golden age of Elizabethan England.
Four distinct musical personalities - or ‘temperaments’ - are represented: the dissonant Robert Parsons, the cool Ferrabosco the Elder, the warm and sanguine Thomas Tallis, and the polar opposites of ecstasy and melancholy of William Byrd.
BBC Radio 3’s Andrew McGregor praised Phantasm's recording of the Mass in Four Voices played on viols alone: "for stylistic insight and subtlety is ironically one of the most satisfying performances of Byrd's Mass."