11 singers of clarity and colour glitter and glow... a sonic festive feast ... The addition of local dance rhythms brings a rustic earthiness to Renaissance Mass from Mexico.

‘Christmas in Puebla’ is to your traditional festive classical album as a spicy, aromatic glass of mulled wine is to a tepid house red...Banish thoughts of cherub-faced choristers in musical soft-focus: this is high-energy, high-definition Christmas, prayer meets party...Siglo de Oro dispatch it all with style, more obviously at home in Padilla’s formal polyphony than the exuberant anthems but gamely giving it their all.

This wonderful collection of mostly joyful music is a worthy addition to anyone’s Christmas collection.

We are treated to Padilla’s own substantial A la xácara xacarilla, featuring plenty of percussion, as well as the rhythmically irrepressible Convidando está la noche by his successor Juan García de Zéspedes...The villancicos by themselves might seem merely a pinch of programming spice, but the true beauty of this album lies in the subtle incorporation of their upbeat mood into the other works.

Christmas in Puebla by the agile young ensemble Siglo de Oro conjures the lively, dance-infused spirit of a 17th-century Christmas in Mexico: all unfamiliar, and brilliantly done.

Padilla’s heartfelt Missa Joseph fili David has never been recorded, and it boasts some shimmering polyphony, luminously sung, but the real heat comes from the villancicos and xacaras, earthier music intended for the masses...Here the Christmas story gets a majestically madcap twist, and the instrumentalists add a final dash of pepper.