Brian Brockless (1926-95), London-born and -bred, was a conductor, organist, teacher and composer whose career embraced orchestral performance, sacred music, musical education and the revival of Renaissance polyphony. After studying with Herbert Howells, Matyas Seiber and Sergiu Celibidache, he taught harmony and orchestration at the Royal Academy of Music and served for many years as Director of Music at a City of London church. This album - the first recorded survey of his music - ranges from works for string orchestra and piano to songs, sacred vocal music and music for organ, most of them prepared from unpublished manuscripts. The music as a whole is marked by an essential Englishness, one which looks to earlier traditions and also reflects the modernity of the second half of the twentieth century.

Renaissance English composer Thomas Tallis is deeply embedded in the Choir of New College Oxford's DNA, an ensemble founded in 1379, well before the birth of the composer. Tallis lived to a ripe old age, under four different monarchs, and was praised for his impeccable craftsmanship. As well as being beautifully finished, his music is also emotionally expressive: works such as Suscipe quaeso Domine demonstrate intense devotional feeling and dramatic text setting. His mastery of the cantus firmus technique is epitomised in the central piece of this album, the Mass 'Puer natus est nobis', a highly sophisticated seven-voice work that is sung here by children and adults. Other works on the programme showcase Tallis's innovation and variety: O nata lux, Salvator mundi and the extraordinary In jejunio et fletu. Tallis inhabited a sound world of his own - one characterised by the voices and musicianship of boy choristers as well as adult singers - so much so that Byrd could say after his death: 'Tallis is dead, and music dies'.

The Queen’s Six release their third album on the Resonus Classics label with a scintillating and varied programme of music for Christmas. Both modern and traditional carols feature alongside a selection of lighter and contemplative evocations of the festive season. The Queen’s Six bring their trademark flair to this broad range of arrangements for men’s voices, with works from the Renaissance to the present day, including a tribute to the life of the inimitable David Willcocks - forever associated with the Christmas season - and new works by Thomas Hewitt Jones, Richard Madden & Matthew Coleridge.

The 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci falls on May 2, 2019. Probably the greatest polymath of all time, Leonardo was also a musician and revered music as the only serious rival for his divine 'science' of painting. Marking this significant anniversary and the legacy of this forward-thinking 'Renaissance Man, ' I Fagiolini combines art, music and science in Leonardo: Shaping the Invisible, a major new touring and recording project conceived with Leonardo expert Professor Martin Kemp. Inspired by Leonardo's relentless curiosity, 'Shaping the Invisible' explores his best-loved images through the prism of music by Tallis, Howells, Victoria, Bach, Monteverdi, Janequin, and more. The project also includes a new commission from composer Adrian Williams and Gillian Clarke, the former National Poet of Wales, provoked by Leonardo's scientific discoveries. In true I Fagiolini style, there are a few post-production surprises in store, whilst the concert tour includes projections of Leonardo's beautiful art.

Impressive throughout … an excellent way to explore his output.

This is a Naxos compilation of works by Thomas Tallis, originally recorded for a range of other discs, performed by the Oxford Camerata under the direction of Jeremy Summerly. The disc features a range of works, in both Latin and English texts, including shorter anthems and mass settings and more extended works. O Sacrum Convivium, written for Elizabeth 1st, features smooth flowing lines and gentle dissonances, and sets the scene for the rest of the disc, with the Oxford Camerata’s blended vocal tone full of expression and resonance. Audivi vocem features plainchant-style sections and choruses, while Discomfort them, O Lord is based on repeated sequences and has a complex monophonic style. Loquebantur variis linguis is a faster work, with imitative entries and rich polyphonic writing interspersed with unison chant settings.

The Sanctus from the Mass for Four Voices is a beautiful setting with strongly characterful word setting, including a bright, major key Gloria and Hosanna. I call and cry to thee, O Lord is an English setting of O Sacrum Convivium and it is interesting to hear the effect of a change of language. The Lamentations of Jeremiah are presented in two separate sets. Set I is well paced, with tempo changes well handled and clearly defined sections. Set II has a beautifully calm and expressive opening, with individual lines entering one by one to build up a stunning five part choral sound. This slow paced music gradually unfolds and provides one of the highlights of the disc.

Videte miraculum features some wonderfully dissonant harmonies, with tension and release an important element of the interaction between the parts. Another slow-moving work, this has a contemplative feel, using mostly simple rhythms and alternating between monophonic writing and polyphony.

The disc ends with the impressive forty-part motet Spem in alium, arguably one of Tallis’s most well-known and dazzling works, with eights choirs of five voices combining to create an elaborate tapestry of sound. Harmonic shifts come like waves, and the full force of all forty voices in the tutti sections has a sense of powerful expression. It is hard to hear definition in the individual parts in this recording (although some come through better than others) and it is difficult to capture the effect of this piece on a recording; this is one piece where a live performance holds an extra dimension, especially if the choirs can be separated around the audience. Nevertheless, the overall effect works well and this is an enjoyable recording.

The choir is impressive throughout this disc, although the blend of voices varies between tracks (presumably because the recordings were made at different times with slight alterations to personnel). Hearing this selection of works by one composer gives a fascinating insight into the range of Tallis’ music, both in terms of compositional style and textural use of the choir. His vocal writing has a sense of naturalness and paved the way for generations of composers after him, defining a style and creating a lineage of British choral music. This disc serves as an excellent way to explore his output, with some beautiful singing from the Oxford Camerata.

-- Carla Rees, MusicWeb International

Music for These Troubled Times explores the melancholy of the past through the keyboard repertoire of the English virginalists of the late 16th and 17th centuries, and links this still familiar state of mind with the present - an age of social and political turbulence, uncertainty, and wars - through Maxim Shalygin's KHORA. Inspired by Robert Burton's 1621 treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy, which praises music as a remedy for the troubled mind, the programme moves between contemplative pavanes, witty variations, and complex polyphonic works. It includes rarely performed pieces and a first recording of the anonymous A Ground. Recorded on three unique harpsichords, it features a rare copy after 1579 L. Theewes' earliest surviving English instrument, a reconstruction of the original state of the 1612 I. Ruckers transposing double-manual harpsichord and a copy of the marvellous 1751 H. Hemsch.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner's personal curation of Easter Choral music inspired by his family's annual Easter Play at his home in Springhead, Dorset. A companion to the Monteverdi Choir's 1998 recording Once as I remember, which told the story of the Springhead Christmas Play. Structured around a series of tableaux, narrating through a combination of the different Gospel accounts, it is a dramatic retelling of the Resurrection story, employing disparate musical styles and frequent shifts of focus and perspective, all held together by the creative vision of a Dorset mother and her son. He writes: "This personal selection of music for Easter from the 11th to the 20th centuries tells the story of the Resurrection and Christ's appearances to his disciples. It is based on my experience of compiling and directing the music for a mimed Easter play, performed in village churches in Dorset every year between 1963 and 1984, the brainchild of my mother, Marabel Gardiner, to whose memory this recording is dedicated."

All of the pieces chosen for this new release center around the theme of evening time. Mark Williams and his Choir of Jesus College Cambridge have released four prior albums with Signum, all of which have gained critical praise. The programme of this album blends ancient and modern, featuring works from Thomas Tallis, William Harris, Gustav Holst, and many more.