Antwerp’s collegiate church of Our Lady developed into one of the most important musical centres in the Low Countries over the course of the 15th and 16th centuries. This recording traces the lineage of the directors of music and the singers associated with the church, the later cathedral. Their music illustrates how polyphony evolved from its late mediaeval roots into the early Baroque period. Gregorian chants from the Antwerp tradition are included with the polyphonic works as a reminder of the daily services and their music: there was always singing in the chancel, in the chapels and at the services of brotherhoods and guilds that were spread throughout the day.

Many composers who wrote primarily for the English cathedral tradition have not received the recognition they deserve outside that cloistered world. Tony Hewitt-Jones (1926–89) is one such composer. Although the choral and organ works heard on this album naturally respond to the requirements of the performers for whom he was writing, they possess a freshness, energy, and individuality that transcend their origins, with a sound world overlapping that of some of his close contemporaries, including John Gardner, Kenneth Leighton, and William Mathias.

Rex regum - An Imperial Christmas recreates one of the most remarkable Christmas celebrations of the Renaissance: the festive Mass celebrated in 's-Hertogenbosch on Christmas Day 1545, attended by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V during an unexpected stay in the city. Centered around Jheronimus Vinders' magnificent Missa Fit porta Christi pervia, the programme weaves together plainsong, Renaissance polyphony, traditional Dutch Christmas songs and organ music to evoke the rich soundscape of a sixteenth-century Christmas liturgy.

This unprecedented recording – released precisely in the year of the celebrations commemorating one of the most significant figures in human history – explores the musical output of Padre Giambattista Martini dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi. A Franciscan friar and ecclesiastical musician, as well as a learned teacher and tireless researcher, Martini composed a Mass (incomplete) and various motets in honour of the Saint. From these, the Ensemble San Pietro – directed by Marcello Rossi and Giacomo Contro – has reconstructed a complete “Franciscan” Mass. The essay accompanying the CD also features a curious analogy between the composer and his saintly dedicatee, supported by a careful analysis of historical documents.

The King's Singers: Live at Christmas captures the celebrated vocal sextet in a live performance recorded at Temple Church, London, on 16 January 2026. Spanning nine centuries of music, the programme moves from medieval plainchant and O Antiphons through Renaissance polyphony to beloved modern carols and seasonal pop, including world premiere recordings of newly commissioned arrangements. Throughout the concert, the singers perform from several different areas of the church, creating varied acoustic effects. Contributions from both longstanding collaborators and the singers themselves reflect the group's ongoing commitment to expanding the choral repertoire.

Der Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks continues its successful collaboration with the Academy for Ancient Music Berlin – with French conductor Denis Comtet making his BR debut. The program features French Marian music from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, including the Marian antiphon by Jean de Ockeghem – a work from the golden age of vocal polyphony. Lise Borel’s “Regina caeli” demonstrate how vibrant and inspiring Marian devotion remains today and how it can continually stimulate new, innovative, and captivating creations.

The 1610 Vespers, composed at a pivotal moment in Claudio Monteverdi’s life when he sought not only to establish his new musical language but also to obtain high-placed employment, take on new significance here. Based on a renewed philological approach and the most recent musicological research, this version recreates the Vespers in accordance with the Mantuan customs of the time, featuring an order of service and plainchant drawn from local sources. Recorded in the Palatine Basilica of Santa Barbara in Mantua and using only the instruments mentioned in the score, this interpretation favours a chamber aesthetic, as suggested by Monteverdi’s remark ad Sacella sive Principum Cubicula accomodata — a work conceived for chapels and the princes’ chambers — and reveals the Vespers in their original intimacy and far removed from monumental display.

A powerful collection of sacred music, cinematic orchestral writing, and American-inspired symphonic storytelling—recorded across two decades and released together for the first time.

This album brings together sacred choral works by composers united by a shared philosophical and theological outlook, offering a sequence that explores stillness, meaning, and the deeper resonance of text through music. Drawn together by a love of music, of philosophy, and of the Christian tradition, their approach is shaped in part by the teaching of Leon MacLaren, a self-taught polymath whose search in pursuit of life’s deeper questions informed a distinctive understanding of sound, listening, and creativity.

Vicente Lusitano is arguably the most significant Portuguese composer of his time and, quite possibly, of all time. Much about his life remains shrouded in mystery, with the few details we have being largely derived from 17th and 18th-century sources, studied in more recent decades by Maria Augusta Barbosa (1977) and Robert Stevenson (1962, 1982). Vicente Lusitano was born in 1522 or earlier in Olivença, Portugal, a city with strong ties to the North African city of Ceuta (which was under Portuguese administration from 1415 to 1580) and to whose diocese Olivença was ecclesiastically subordinate between 1513 and 1570. Lusitano must have studied music in this city under the guidance of one Pero Brujel or Brugel, who was presumably a composer of Flemish origin.

There are projects that spring from a hunch and which, driven by conviction and hard work, eventually come to seem entirely natural. The 'Messes Breves' project is a bold initiative that brings together works rarely performed together, breathing new life into pieces that are all too seldom heard in concert or on record. To bring together on the same recording the Missa brevis in D minor of Mozart, the Orgelmesse of Haydn and the Missa brevis of Fabian Fiorini, a work commissioned especially for this project, manifests the desire to abandon a well-worn track and promote a repertory that is as demanding as it is profoundly alive. This condensed form, rich in emotion, encourages spiritual reflection, aesthetic appreciation and a deep connection with the timeless tradition of sacred music.

Ever since the invention of church music, there has been a ceaseless dispute among ecclesiastical leaders, theologians, and zealots over the true way to sing the Lord’s praises. For some, it could not be ascetic and austere enough; for others, it could not be lavish and operatic enough—and in the end, they have all made enduring contributions to the eternal repertoire. With his Opus 7, printed in Venice in 1662, Giovanni Legrenzi—formerly Kapellmeister of the Accademia dello Spirito Santo in Ferrara—provided compelling evidence that extremes can be transcended and fused into a higher unity. The monastic night prayers (“compiete”) and Marian chants appended to them rise above all dark thoughts with an almost playful joy, without the music lacking in meditative contemplation. And above it all reigns a polyharmonic vitality that casts aside all attempts at theological speculation.

Alexey Sysoev is unique among contemporary Russian composers. This automatically means that he has a very distinctive musical identity, which is directly connected to his vast and reflective inner world, his sense of self as a person and as part of the universe — both real and transcendental. But he also possesses his own peculiar compositional technique, combining improvisational skills with the sophisticated recording know-how for his extraordinary musical thoughts. Is it as if the improviser does not think, as if he just gets the scent of things and feels relaxed? Today’s “cool” composer is unthinkable without linking himself to clearly defined stratagems. The level at which seemingly incompatible approaches are combined is still difficult to construct. Be that as it may, everything that Alexey Sysoev composes not only becomes an exquisite aesthetic experience, but also makes us reflect on ourselves and try to figure out, at least in simple terms, where the bridge between the hard and conceptual and the soft and enjoyable lies within us.

The Rio Continental Orchestra is a musical group that plays Latin jazz and big band bossa nova music.

Following the publication of the collection Parnassus Musicus Ferdinandaeus in 1615, all kinds of compiled collections of sacred music started to appear, often featuring music for smaller ensembles and of course, in the new early-Baroque style, music scored for voice, instruments and basso continuo. The compiler, usually a composer himself, gathered works from his colleagues, added some of his own work and had the collection published. Nowadays because of copyright this would be unimaginable, particularly if publishing the compositions of one’s own contemporaries.