It says something about the limited horizons of both choirmasters and producers that I now have five different recordings of Missa Papae Marcelli on my shelves, but not a single version of most of Palestrina's other, equally great Masses. Although the Regensburg Cathedral Boys' Choir tries hard in its performance of this well-trodden music, the competition is stiff and everything is against them. Dull vowell sounds, husky lower voices, tuning that is sometimes far from sweet, a distant recording and foggy acoustic that reduce the inner voices to a mush: none of these makes for a winning result. In addition, we are deprived of the first ''Agnus Dei'' altogether, and given only the second, seven-part invocation in a reading that proceeds with quite astonishing bluntness. Magic moments, in fact, are decidedly in short supply both in the Mass itself and in the potentially interesting selection of motets that follows it. Not even Dum complerentur is truly thrilling, and it doesn't help that the two halves of the motet have been recorded separately and stuck together with an intervening gap of almost ten seconds, effectively breaking Palestrina's inbuilt continuity.
If you must have Missa Papae Marcelli sung by boy chorister, look no further than Simon Preston's Archiv Produktion performance with the choir of Westminster Abbey, a version that had GR fairly panting with enthusiasm. This benefits from finer attention to the music's details, much cleaner singing and closer recording, even if it does lack something in atmosphere. Even better to my mind—though I see that DF is less convinced by it—is the Gimell version sung by the Tallis Scholars under Peter Phillips, with its gloriously transparent texture, bright sonority and immaculate chording.'