This is a very welcome release indeed, coming four years after I Fagiolini’s superb recording for Chandos, which itself came twenty-five years after Pro Cantione Antiqua’s for Archiv. The King’s Singers’ version outshines them both.

In The Triumphs of Oriana Thomas Morley (c.1557-1602), Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and madrigalist extraordinaire, sought to flatter Elizabeth I, who had previously granted him a monopoly to print music by collecting together 25 madrigals written by some of the master musicians of the age in praise of the Virgin Queen. In doing so, Morley was consciously imitating (and hoping to surpass) the fashionable Italian madrigal; more specifically, he was inspired by Il Trionfo di Dori (1598), a collection of 29 madrigals by different composers written in honour of Leonardo Sanudo’s Venetian bride. Each madrigal in that collection ends in “Viva la bella Dori!”; each in Morley’s, published three years later, ends “Long live fair Oriana!”.

The King’s Singers move through the Arcadian conceits of this collection with consummate ease. They are more rhythmically alert than Pro Cantione Antiqua while sharing its careful enunciation of the texts; I Fagiolini, by contrast, is also rhythmically vital but intonation is not as precise. Of course, the madrigals themselves are of varying quality; among the best are the opening Hence Stars by East, Tomkin’s The fauns and satyrs tripping, Weelke’s As Vesta was from Latmos hill descending and Morley’s own Hard by a crystal fountain. But a handsome feast nevertheless. Long live the King’s Singers! WILLIAM YEOMAN