This review of the Choir's CD of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 (available to purchase) was published in the May issue of Early Music:

Sometimes the coming together of a group of talented student musicians and a great work which few of them have performed before can, by generating a unique sense of discovery, produce very exciting results. This is certainly the case with Monteverdi: Vespers of 1610 (Signum SIGCD111, rec 2007, 90'). Ralph Allwood's Rodolfus Choir sing with an infectious freshness and enthusiasm which communicates something of the "shock of the new" surely created by the first performance of this astonishing compendium of the latest sacred styles.

The choir's clear, bright tone and springy rhythmic energy, fully matched by the instrumentalists of the Southern Sinfonia and English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, give the opening Deus in adjutorium its essential electrifying effect, and, along with their splendidly precise chordal declamation and admirable vocal agility, produce compellingly vigorous and ardent performances of the large-scale psalms and the Magnificat, with thrilling climaxes and beautifully judged responses to all Monteverdi's touches of word-painting, which convey both the overwhelming grandeur and the delicate expressiveness of his music.

Transitions of speed and style are particularly well managed, so that episodic pieces such as Dixit Dominus are satisfyingly coherent, and have a real sense of drama. This meticulous and sensitive attention to detail also characterizes the motets, whether in the gently caressing Nigra sum, the luxuriantly languorous Pulchra es, or the quietly meditative Audi coelum, all of which strike just the right balance between devotional fervour and secular sensuality. Performances of the Vespers which avoid all the pitfalls presented by its mixture of styles are rarer than they ought to be; this one, in its understanding that even when the words are sacred Latin rather than amorous Italian, they are still the key to unlocking the full expressive potential of Monteverdi's music, comes as close to doing so as the most captious critic could possibly wish.

(Elizabeth Roche, Early Music)