Steve Smith on Stile Antico

"Stile Antico, a bright, young early-music vocal ensemble from England, made its New York debut as part of the Music Before 1800 series at Corpus Christi Church on Sunday afternoon. … Listen to Stile Antico’s most recent CD, 'Song of Songs,' and you are confronted with an ensemble of breathtaking freshness, vitality and balance. It was no fluke of marketing that made the disc a best seller and earned it a Gramophone Award (though the group’s profile was probably boosted by having worked with Sting). Nevertheless, Stile Antico’s extra effort paid dividends during a concert that nearly duplicated the contents of the album, a collection of 16th-century European settings of passages from the biblical Song of Solomon. … Working without a conductor, the singers kept a keen eye on one another, giving their pitch-perfect sound a finely honed precision in the rippling sequences of Clemens non Papa’s 'Ego flos campi' and the ricocheting counterpoint of Sebastián de Vivanco’s 'Veni, dilecte mi.' Rich harmonies in selections by Nicolas Gombert and Jean Lhéritier had a luminous glow. … You could almost smell the perfume wafting through a ravishing account of Victoria’s 'Vidi speciosam'" ("Music Review," New York Times, 10/27/09).