The British choir called the Sixteen and its director Harry Christophers have succeeded in bringing the choral music of the Renaissance and Baroque to broad audiences with sunny, attractive sound from its mixed-gender, all-adult forces. Here it turns, no doubt to the delight of those who've already discovered this tradition, to the rich and fascinating music of Spanish-colonial Mexico. Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla was a Spaniard who emigrated to Mexico in midlife and became the choirmaster at the magnificent cathedral in Puebla, colonial Mexico's "second city." His music harks back to that of the Spanish High Renaissance: it is mostly a cappella (a small continuo group is used in a few pieces), with smoothly measured polyphony and the thoroughgoing dark hues of Victoria. The Streams of Tears of the title come from a line, a mixed metaphor in fact, from the motet "Mirabilia testimonia tua: Exitus aquarum deduxerunt oculi mei, quia non custodierunt legem tuam" (Streams of tears flow from my eyes because they do not keep Your Law). But while Padilla's basic textures are closer to Victoria than to Monteverdi, his exposure and reaction to later music shows in his treatment of texts (all of which are given in Latin and English). "Mirabilia testimonia tua" is one of several pieces that drew on the cathedral's luxurious resources (its choir numbered 28 men and 14 boys) with double-choir settings alternating declamation and polyphony, while smaller-scale works such as the "Ave regina caelorum" seem to use pace and dissonance to express the meanings of each word and phrase. Padilla reserves his soberest, most conservative style for the Stabat mater fragment and the four-section "Missa Ave regina caelorum" parody mass. The Sixteen execute all of this marvelously, with precisely honed singing that never overstates anything but gives the music its proper rhythmic momentum when that is what was meant. The recording was made at London's St. Paul's church, but it grew from the choir's Mexican tour, and they would appear to have thought in situ about problems of text intelligibility. The overall effect is to amplify the deep gloom of Victoria with some of the energy of the Venetian style of the late sixteenth century, and even for the casual listener it's a powerful combination.
James Manheim, All Music Guide