The Amsterdam Loeki Stardust Quartet, once considered Holland's 'younger generation', have mellowed with age and experience. Their professionalism contrasts starkly with the amateur image of the recorder consort. The repertory they play includes some of the earliest Renaissance instrumental music, originally for unspecified forces, as well as sacred and secular four-part vocal works (their titles are the only vestige of their texts); the way in which they order the music also seems to have an underlying didactic purpose. Daniel Bruggen leads the ensemble with the skill and confidence that comes with growing up in the business.
Over the years, the quartet have championed new instruments by makers the world over, which they adroitly use to create a wide array of ensemble timbres to suit the range and character of individual works. Their degree of control is in this sense astonishing: by their choice of instruments they powerfully influence our impression of the music. On this recording they play 27 different recorders, by Robert Marvin, Ture Bergstrom, Friedrich von Huene, Fred Morgan, Willy Hopf and Yamaha. Instruments built to be played in homogeneous sets (often copies of instruments from the same era in different registers, such as those by Marvin or von Huene) produce the organ-like textures of the In Nomines and the motets, while combinations of different instruments can be used to underscore the layers of activity within musical textures.
The quartet assumes an extraordinary degree of interpretative control. Their superb command of articulation (as in Prince Edward's Paven) and their ability to 'orchestrate' textures imbue the music with a rare coherence, treating the listener to previously unimagined intricacies. Their tuning varies too with the instruments and repertory. Inevitably the line between the original composition and their arrangement is blurred, the ornamentation being such a personal and yet characterful aspect of the repertory. But the aplomb with which they wield these forces is beyond question.'