Following their 11-album cycle of Mozart’s piano concertos recorded with Ronald Brautigam, Die Kölner Akademie and Michael Alexander Willens in 2017 released an album with two of Mozart’s best-loved serenades: the Posthorn Serenade and Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The result was warmly received, for instance in the French magazine Classica where it was described as ‘a truly attractive disc to chase away the gloom’ and on MusicWeb-International.com: ‘Die Kölner Akademie … demonstrate once again that they are amongst the best groups in the world of period performance’. Joined by the tenor John Heuzenroeder and the male voices of the Kölner Akademie Choir, the team has now recorded the music that Mozart wrote for performance at Masonic gatherings. Mozart was himself a Mason during the last seven years of his life, and composed a number of songs and cantatas for various occasions. Best-known is probably the Masonic Funeral Music, K477, heard here in a version – ‘Meistermusik’ – devised by the Mozart scholar Philippe Autexier in an attempt to reconstruct the original performance of the piece. Also included are the four orchestral interludes to the play Thamos, König in Ägypten, fine examples of Mozart’s music in the ‘Sturm und Drang’ tradition. Thamos was written by the poet and Mason Tobias von Gebler, and parallels have frequently been drawn between it and the more overtly Masonic Magic Flute.

Krzysztof Penderecki's setting of the Passion story as told in the Gospel of St Luke was premièred in 1966 and immediately established a place for itself among the most important large-scale choral works of the twentieth century. Despite its decidedly modernist idiom, the music’s emotional power, glowing colors and sonic impact spoke to audiences as well as critics, one of whom described St Luke's Passion as ‘the most important bridge between the spirit of the liturgy and modern music.’

Strongly influenced by the Passions of J. S. Bach, Penderecki pays homage to the great composer by using the B-A-C-H motif throughout the work, and like Bach he has arranged his Passion in two parts, with monumental choral numbers framing the whole. The score is for large forces including an extended orchestra, three mixed choirs, plus a boys’ choir, speaker and three vocal soloists (soprano, baritone and bass). On 20th July 2018 these all convened at the Felsenreitschule in Salzburg: l'Orchestre symphonique de Montréal with their principal conductor Kent Nagano, the Warsaw Boys Choir and Kraków Philharmonic Chorus, the three soloists and the actor Slawomir Holland. The occasion was the opening concert of the Salzburg Festival, and in the audience was the composer himself, Krzysztof Penderecki. Present was also a recording team led by Robert Suff, senior producer at BIS, and this album is the document of this very special occasion.

Hailed by the international music press and highly praised by music connoisseurs, the recordings of Bach’s entire body of vocal music made by the Bach Collegium Japan (BCJ), its conductor Masaaki Suzuki, and numerous prestigious soloists, many of whom have remained remarkably loyal to the undertaking from the outset, are here brought together to form the only complete set of these works in Hybrid SACD format.

Suzuki’s aim with these works is to deliver ‘a message which can touch the human heart, regardless of nationality or cultural tradition’. Thus, he delivers performances characterized by particular attention to natural phrasing and timbral homogeneity in the service of transparency, finely articulated expression without affectation, and a balanced dialogue between voices and instruments.

In addition to its 78 discs, which include sacred and secular cantatas, the two Passions, the Christmas, Easter, and Ascension Oratorios, the Mass in B minor, the motets, the Magnificat, the Lutheran Masses, as well as songs and alternative movements, this box set includes four booklets providing essays about the music (in English, German, and French) by world-renowned experts on the music, as well as all the sung texts (in German and English translation).

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
Includes cantata(s) by Johann Sebastian Bach. Ensembles: Concerto Palatino Brass Ensemble, Bach Collegium Japan. Conductor: Masaaki Suzuki. Soloists: Gerd Türk, Peter Kooij, Yukari Nonoshita, Robin Blaze.

Classical Music

Since the 1960s, the Swedish Radio Choir has been recognized as a - not to say the - world-leading a cappella choir. Made up of 33 professional singers, the choir has been engaged by some of today's leading conductors, such as Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti and Esa-Pekka Salonen, for concerts, tours and recordings. This success story began in 1952 when the legendary choir conductor Eric Ericson became principal conductor of the choir. When the Estonian conductor Tõnu Kaljuste became the choir's first non-Swedish principal conductor, he introduced the choir to new repertoire in a particularly exciting collaboration. It is the fruits of this we can enjoy on the present disc: three works on sacred themes by Kaljuste's compatriot Arvo Pärt (of which one, Dopo la vittoria, was dedicated to Kaljuste and the Swedish Radio Choir) and Alfred Schnittke's short Voices of Nature and monumental Concerto for Choir. Using texts by the 10th century Armenian mystic Gregory of Narek - in a Russian translation - the 40-minute long Concerto has become a classic in the modern repertoire for choir. In several ways the work invokes the music of the Russian Orthodox Church, and in fact, Schnittke was reluctant to publish the work outside of Russia, as he feared that non-Russian performances would lack religious intensity. But as anyone will know who has listened to the Swedish Radio Choir's previous BIS release (BIS-CD-1048), such fears would be groundless in the circumstances. The choir's interpretation of Bengt Hambræus's Apocalipsis was described as 'breathtakingly exciting' by the critics - and their performance of the music of Schnittke and Pärt will surely make as big an impact. It is with great pride that BIS resumes the collaboration with the Swedish Radio Choir - with a recording of the Requiems by Duruflé and Fauré to look forward to!.

After two volumes concentrating on solo cantatas, the full forces - including the splendid choir - of Bach Collegium Japan return in this programme of five cantatas dated 1725. The choir instantly makes its presence felt in the first movement of the opening work, BWV68. This is a large-scale hymn arrangement, where the choir is supported by an orchestra including horns and oboes. This is followed by one of the most charming and beautiful soprano arias in all of Bach's cantatas, 'Mein gläubiges Herze', in which Carolyn Sampson shines. The five works all include more or less unusual instrumental combinations, from the three recorders which lend a pastoral character to 'Er rufet seinen Schafen mit Namen', BWV175, to the wind quartet (two oboi d'amore and two oboi da caccia) appearing in 'Sie werden euch in den Bann tun', BWV183. The variety of timbres is further aided by the appearance of the cornet and trombones of Concerto Palatino, as well as that of Dmitry Badiarov performing the important and soloistic parts for violoncello piccolo on his own reconstruction of a violoncello 'da spalla' ('of the shoulder'). Apart from Carolyn Sampson, the vocal soloists are Gerd Türk, who glows in the intensely melodic tenor aira 'Seht, was die Liebe tut' (from BWV85), Peter Kooij, whose bass becomes the voice of Christ in 'Ich bin ein guter Hirt', (BWV85), and Robin Blaze having a fine moment in the expressive alto aria 'Komm, leite mich' (BWV175). All in all, another impressive instalment in this highly acclaimed cycle.

Dividing his time between the United States and the United Kingdom, the composer Geoffrey Gordon writes music that has been described as ‘darkly seductive’ (New York Times), ‘richly satisfying’ (BBC Music Magazine) and ‘iridescent and fierce’ (The Chicago Tribune). The present album brings together three of his recent works, all composed between 2013 and 2018 for the soloist recording them here, the Danish cellist Toke Møldrup. In several of his works, Gordon takes his inspiration from other art forms – sculptures by Giacometti, a self portrait by Warhol, a children’s picture book by Maurice Sendak. The works gathered here are inspired by or reactions to three literary masterworks. The ‘creative blueprint’ for the opening work, the Cello Concerto, is the novel Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann. Organized into a Prologue and Seven Episodes, the work traces the progress of Mann’s protagonist Adrian Leverkühn from innocence to madness, with the cello both embodying and (occasionally) commenting on the proceedings. For this recording, Møldrup receives the support of the Copenhagen Phil and conductor Lan Shui. In the score of Fathoms, Gordon’s sonata for cello and piano, each of the five movements is headed with a quotation from Shakespeare’s The Tempest which sets the scene for the musical impression that follows. Here Møldrup is joined by the American pianist Steven Beck. The amply-filled album closes with Ode to a Nightingale, with the words of John Keat’s immortal poem heard from the Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir, and given emphasis by Toke Møldrup’s obbligato cello.

Classical Music

Allmanna Sangen began its existence as a male-voice choir affiliated to the University of Uppsala in 1830, but was reformed as a mixed choir in 1963. Ever since, the choir has expanded its repertoire and stylistic range, often surprising audiences with its unconventional approach to familiar works and with collaborations across genres. On Femina moderna, the choir and its conductor Maria Goundorina present a programme with recent works by Swedish and international women composers: no less than ten of the thirteen works included were written in 2000 or later. Most recently composed is Anna Karin Klockar’s Speeches which in 2016 won first prize in a competition for women composers arranged by the choir. The competition, the Allmanna Sangen & Anders Wall Composition Award, was first held in 2014 in celebration of the choir’s 50th anniversary as a mixed choir. The winning work on that occasion, Sandskrift by Maria Lofberg, is also included on this disc, along with pieces by composers such as Lera Auerbach and Libby Larsen, Cecilia McDowall, Galina Grigorjeva, and Nana Forte.

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Bach’s secular cantatas, in contrast to his sacred works, were not always intended to be performed for a specific church service. They were frequently commissioned for weddings, funerals, or other occasions. This new release is the sixth volume of Bach’s secular cantatas, and includes Trauerode alongside others. This album is performed by the Bach Collegium Japan.

Tenebrae - The Journey marks the choir's 25th anniversary with a programme built around the theme of passage and transformation. Conductor Nigel Short pairs three new commissions-from Jason Max Ferdinand, Joby Talbot, and Joanna Marsh-with established works by Eric Whitacre, John Tavener, Max Richter, and others. Sarah Henderson's piece, winner of Tenebrae's inaugural Undiscovered Voices composition competition, also features. Recorded in February 2026, the album demonstrates the choir's characteristic blend of precision and warmth across repertoire spanning gospel-inflected anthems, intimate meditation, and large-scale choral drama. Music, as Short puts it, that rewards attentiveness-the more you listen, the more you hear.

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.

Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers is the landmark work of early Baroque music. It sits at the crossroads of Renaissance polyphony and the new dramatic style heard in his first opera, L'Orfeo. 'The Vespers' redefined what sacred music could sound like - emotionally immediate, virtuosic, both looking back to the past and driving forward into the future. Monteverdi specialists I Fagiolini and Robert Hollingworth have waited until their 40th birthday to record the 1610 collection. This is a lifetime's work with every nuance of drama and colour brought out in their one-to-a-part performance.

Music for children plays an important role in Miloslav Kabelac's artistic oeuvre. Especially in the early days after the communist coup in 1948, the composer devoted himself to this genre: 'I regard composing for children as a 'touchstone' not only for all creative abilities, but also for the human qualities of the composer. That is why I take this work as seriously and as importantly as any other". In his music, Kabelac creates powerful atmospheric images with a playful sensitivity for language, some of which is highly onomatopoeic. His serious engagement with children's works is once again evident in the fact that Kabelac repeatedly quoted motifs and melodies from children's works in larger symphonic works.

Romuald Twardowski: The Echo

With this recording, the Gaechinger Cantorey turns to Johann Sebastian Bach's motets, works widely regarded as a pinnacle of sacred vocal music. Emerging from an intensively prepared series of concerts and recorded at the TauberPhilharmonie Weikersheim, the album combines tonal transparency, expressive power, and vibrant historically informed performance practice at the highest level. Bach's motets rank among the most impressive works in the choral repertoire. Between intimate devotion and the splendor of double-choir writing unfolds a musical cosmos filled with contrapuntal mastery, emotional intensity, and eight-part virtuosity. Finely balanced instrumental colours complement the choral sound, lending the works remarkable transparency and flexibility. For many years, the Gaechinger Cantorey has played a defining role in the performance of Bach's music with a sound that is at once precise, agile, and immediate. Under the direction of Hans-Christoph Rademann, the ensemble's interpretations understand historically informed performance practice as a means of rediscovering the emotional power and complexity of this music. The ensemble's distinctive artistic profile is especially evident in the motets: transparent in sound, closely attuned to the text, and driven by great musical energy. With this release, Accentus Music continues it's long-standing collaboration with the Gaechinger Cantorey, which has already resulted in several highly acclaimed Bach recordings.

On 21 August 2026, Divine Art is thrilled to release the world premiere recording of Piedra de sol (Sunstone), acclaimed composer Joby Talbot's stunning choral setting of Mexican poet Octavio Paz's epic masterpiece, performed by GRAMMY Award-winning choir Conspirare and Artistic Director Craig Hella Johnson. Drawing on the symbolism of the Aztec calendar stone, Octavio Paz's poem Piedra de sol (1957) is like no other. It uses techniques of modern poetry, particularly surrealist imagery, to meditate on cyclical time and the possibility of breaking it's grip through poetry and love, as explained by Adela Pineda Franco of the University of Texas at Austin in her excellent booklet article. The poem had a profound emotional impact on Joby Talbot: '..the hugeness of the poet's vision; the cosmic immensity of the imagery; the febrile surrealistic intensity of a sensory journey through space and time from reality to fantasy and back again; the sudden moments of heartfelt intimacy that never fail to surprise.' The seventy-minute-long musical structure mirrors the poem's narrative journey from ecstatic vision, through deep despair, to eventual enlightenment. It features a wide range of vocal textures, extended passages of complex rhythmic interplay, exposed solo passages for a single voice, and episodes where slabs of sound reflect the poem's terrifying images. Colouring much of the music is the marimba (superbly played by Thomas Burritt), which anchors the harmonies and rhythm and contributes to the otherworldly character of the musical palette. Piedra de sol invites listeners and performers alike on a journey of infinite dimensions - a voyage whose course bends, advances, recedes, comes full circle, and arrives forever. London-born Joby Talbot is a leading composer for concert, stage, and screen. He has written widely for voice and choir, setting poetry, sacred, and historical texts for varying ensembles. Prominent within Talbot's catalogue are his works for stage and screen. His operas Everest (2014) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2020) both explore themes of despair and endurance, while his collaboration with leading choreographer Christopher Wheeldon has produced original full-length narrative ballet adaptations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2010), The Winter's Tale (2013), Like Water for Chocolate (2021), and the life of Oscar Wilde (Oscar, 2024). Talbot has also scored major feature films The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Sing (2016), Sing 2 (2021), and Wonka (2023). Conspirare is a professional choral organization under the leadership of Artistic Director Craig Hella Johnson. Inspired by the power of music to change lives, this ensemble engages singers from around the world who join voices to deliver world-class, extraordinary live musical experiences and recordings. Their discography includes 17 commercial albums and 20 self-produced live albums. Hella Johnson and Conspirare were awarded a 2015 GRAMMY for Best Choral Performance for The Sacred Spirit of Russia, and their recordings have received 12 total nominations, including for advena: liturgies for a broken world: music of Mark Buller, released in 2025 on Divine Art. Conspirare has also been recognized with the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkrtik for it's Path of Miracles album (2015) and the Edison Award in the Choral Music category (2010). Conspirare has performed throughout the United States and internationally. On this recording, the choir includes tenor Haitham Haidar (whose recently released debut album Zaytoun on Athene was nominated for a JUNO Award), Savannah Porter of Voces8, early music specialists Jonathan Woody and Dann Coakwell, and the incredible Basso Profundo Glenn Miller.

For so many, coming out is framed as a kind of reckoning-a threshold one must cross, as if queerness begins in secrecy and only later earns the right to be spoken aloud. That narrative suggests burden before freedom, fear before love. But why should love require courage simply to exist? Such is the world we've inherited. For centuries, desire that fell outside society's narrow definitions was forced underground, met with shame, exile, or silence. In that silence, letters became a refuge: fragile but fearless vessels for truths that could not be safely expressed aloud. The Secret Letter re-imagines a program of the same name performed by Cantus in the spring of 2025, weaving music together with excerpts from letters by Marcus Aurelius, Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and others. These interludes offer fleeting access to private moments of longing, devotion, and vulnerability, while the surrounding music expands and amplifies their emotional terrain, carrying forward their tension, tenderness, restraint, and release. Letters are remarkable things. They are both private and exposed, meant for a single reader yet capable of outliving both the writer and recipient. Passed between trembling hands, they hold confessions, desires, and love stories told in ink rather than whispers. The Secret Letter bears witness and celebrates queer love that has always existed-persistent, imaginative, and worthy of song-and that even in secrecy, has found ways to speak, to sing, and to survive.

True Concord's newest album, HERE I AM, features two world-premiere recordings of works by Jocelyn Hagen. The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci has been performed more than 50 times around the world since 2019, incorporating visuals, sound, light and movement. Here I Am was inspired by conductor Eric Holtan's suggestion that Hagen should write a piece celebrating the women's suffrage movement and the centennial of the 19th Amendment in 2020. This piece is performed with live-concert projections of portraits of 47 inspiring women from across the world and across time, whose words form the libretto. HERE I AM was recorded in outstanding fidelity by engineer John Polito and produced by GRAMMY-award winner Peter Rutenberg of Los Angeles. Recorded May 28-31, 2024.

Philip Moore is a prolific British composer, who was organist and Master of the Music at York Minster for 25 years. Before moving to York he held posts at Guildford Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral and Eton College. He retired from the York Minster in 2008 and was appointed Organist Emeritus. The Archbishop of York awarded him the Order of St William. Moore's sacred choral music is extremely popular with church choirs around the world. This recording features a number of works specially written for St Albans Cathedral Choir and the album also includes five premiere recordings.

This album brings together major choral works by Hubert Parry and Edward Elgar, reflecting the richness of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British music. At it's centre is Parry's de Profundis, a large-scale setting of Psalm 130, widely admired by contemporaries for it's emotional depth, contrapuntal mastery, and expressive journey from penitence to hope. Parry's anthem God Is Our Hope and Strength complements it with a grand, confident vision of choral architecture and spiritual assurance. Elgar is represented by the intimate partsong The Snow and the charming Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands, inspired by Alpine landscapes and folk traditions, capturing a more personal and lyrical side of his art.

Here's a case where the music so completely and satisfyingly transcends the texts, that we can thoroughly enjoy the proceedings without really having to know what all the singing and playing is about. The texts--the singing is in Latin--are in the most serious, heavily ornate, flowery Baroque poetic style, and are concerned with religious devoutness and allegorical representations of traits such as "Fortitude", "Suspicion", "Dignity", "Faith", and "Godliness". Even the work's title, which translates "Under the olive tree of peace and the palm tree of virtue the Crown of Bohemia splendidly shines before the whole world", tells you something of the solemnity and high importance of the occasion for which it was written: the 1723 coronation ceremony in Prague of Emperor Charles VI and his wife Elisabeth Christine. Zelenka's music, which amounts to a kind of oratorio-type structure--orchestral introductions and interludes, choruses, arias, and various other solo/choral combinations--actually was designed to accompany a dramatic presentation that also included dances and parts for actors. Fortunately for us today, we can sit back and just listen to some of the more delightful--sometimes breathtakingly powerful--music from this period that didn't come from the pen of Bach or Handel. Even Zelenka was impressed enough with some of the work's movements that he reused them in adapted form the following year for sections of his Te Deum.

The opening Sinfonia is a brilliant enough piece all on its own, but the chorus that immediately follows takes us to yet another level of excitement, setting a sumptuously decorated stage for what is to come. Although there's a substantial amount of music here, no one section stays too long, and the arias show care for musical beauty well beyond anything suggested by the texts. And there's nothing pale or simple in the writing either, whether for instruments or voices: much of it, especially the vocal solos, requires performers of considerable accomplishment, even virtuosity. The opening chorus is quite a tour de force, and in this performance we're treated to the lovely sound and impeccable technique of the boys' and men's voices of the Czech choir Boni Pueri. That this is a Czech production mirrors its original performance in Prague's Jesuit Clementinum, which not only involved native Czech singers and actors, but also was conducted by the Czech-born Zelenka. The orchestral writing, which includes such ceremonial staples as trumpets and timpani, used to great effect, is bright-spirited and masterfully constructed to hold our interest and maintain dramatic momentum. The soloists are generally very good and there's some really terrific interaction in duets and in dialogs with the chorus. The sound is full-bodied and sufficiently detailed to give immediate presence to all the performers while preserving appropriate balances. Anyone who enjoys large-scale Baroque choral/orchestral music will love this unusual and musically engaging work--another gem in the crown of a composer that's finally getting just recognition.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com
Reviewing original release, Supraphon 3520

Classical Music