Notwithstanding reconstruction work and research by Nick Sandon, the Peterhouse Partbooks remain under-performed and under-recorded, a state of affairs evidently being addressed at last by the American ensemble Blue Heron. On the evidence of these recordings they have a fine sense of the idiom of this distinctive music, and their performances are rich, muscular and expressive. If I feel they lack the final gloss of some English ensembles, this may be a recording issue, and the singing and interpretations are impeccable. Hearing Aston's swirling vocal lines, one is powerfully reminded of the significance of this neglected English master, who deserves to stand beside the really big names of the early Renaissance, and whose reputation has hitherto been suppressed by the random and tragic loss of a single tenor partbook. --D. James Ross, Early Music Review (UK)Speaking of vocalists, an exquisite young Boston-based choir has been developing its sound and repertoire over the past decade and has just released its second disc. Blue Heron's first release was a brilliant Dufay program (BHCD 1001) that came out in 2007; the anxiously-awaited (by me, in any case) follow-up is even more exciting: it is the first volume in a projected series of recordings taken from the Peterhouse Partbooks, which reside at Peterhouse College, Cambridge. Since the tenor parts from these books were lost long ago, the works contained in them have generally been neglected. But musicologist Nick Sandon devoted years of his career to reconstructing those parts, and the fruit of that labor is this new series of world-premiere recordings. The first volume (BHCD 1002) focuses on never-before-recorded Marian antiphons by Hugh Aston, but also contains a Magnificat setting by Robert Jones and John Mason's gorgeous Quales sumus O miseri. It would be impossible to overstate the luscious beauty of this recording, and its deep musical and historical significance is beyond argument. The sound quality is warm, rich and inviting. At the risk of unseemly gushing, I simply have to rate this disc as utterly essential in every way. --Rick Anderson, Music Media MonthlyThe five pieces on this program are all taken from the Peterhouse Partbooks, a large collection of music (72 works) from late in the reign of Henry VIII. The Eton Choirbook is earlier and better known, while this source has been neglected because one of the five partbooks (the tenor) is missing and pages are also missing from the beginning and end of the treble partbook. Only a third of the contents can be reconstructed from cognate sources. The collection appears to have been copied for the new choral establishment at Canterbury Cathedral that replaced the monks after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539 40. It was later acquired by Peterhouse College at Cambridge, which set out to establish a choral repertoire for its new chapel in the following century. Nick Sandon devoted his doctoral dissertation to completing the missing parts and has revised and published many of the works since then.  Scott Metcalfe's Boston-based vocal ensemble (18 members here, though the performances are assigned to 10 or 12 singers) has performed this music ever since its first concert in 1999, when the opening work on this disc was heard. Their first recording, a fine survey of Dufay's shorter works (Fanfare 31:1), was such a revelation that it is no surprise to hear the splendid performances of a later repertoire on the present disc. Four of the pieces are votive antiphons, a form that inspired so much great music of the Tudor era. The three works by Hugh Aston are all dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, enlarging on the familiar Ave Maria text. Sandon warns not to be too critical of the uneven quality of the original Latin texts but to take them in their intended devotional context. Gaude virgo mater Christi was recently included in a Stile Antico disc (30:5 and 31:1). The other antiphon, John Mason's piece, is quite interesting, stuffed with biblical allusion and written in rather elegant and resourceful Latin, as Sandon puts it. It was included in a diverse program that Bill Ives made for Signum recently and in another under Harry Christophers (31:2). It is a highly original meditation begging the Blessed Virgin for intercession. The alternatim Magnificat setting by Robert Jones is quite similar to settings by his more well-known contemporaries.  All three composers are represented in some way in current catalogs, although Jones's other recorded works are secular. The group compares very favorably with the three different English ensembles that have recorded one or another of these pieces. (Both pieces were also recorded in the LP era.) Since two of them are choirs, the performance by the vocal ensemble Stile Antico comes closest to Blue Heron, and its program is similar to the Tudor collection heard here. This is a remarkable disc, auguring well for Scott Metcalfe's next venture. --J. F. Weber, Fanfare