Uniting beauty and simplicity, Laudate Omnes Gentes comes from the heart of the Taize Community as it brings together well-known songs by Jacques Berthier and more recent songs composed by brothers of the Community. Listeners will be enchanted by the gloriously delicate choral sound, recorded at the twelfth-century village church at Taize. Using a small group of just sixteen singers and five instrumentalists, the aim of this recording is to encourage smaller groups to use music during their meetings. Simply a gorgeous collection of favorites!

Classical Music

Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination – the British Library’s first major exhibition to bring together the Library’s Royal collection, a treasure trove of illuminated manuscripts from between the 9th and 16th centuries collected by the kings and queens of England between the 9th and 16th centuries. This CD is inspired by the exhibition and includes works performed by The Sixteen from the Eton Choirbook alongside fascinating pieces from medieval and Renaissance France, equally preserved in beautifully illuminated collections of manuscripts and performed here by the Hilliard Ensemble. And finally, one of the crowning glories of music from the Tudor period, Tallis’s monumental Spem in Alium. Over the years it has been our overwhelming desire to rejoice in the survival of this great music. It is collections such as those preserved at the British Library that have enabled us to bring back to life the music that illuminated these fascinating periods in our history.

Since 1727, J.S. Bach's "Great Passion" has gripped the hearts and uplifted the minds of audiences all over the globe. Nearly three centuries after its premiere, the work has lost none of its power to evoke feelings of compassion for all those who suffer. Its mix of urgent storytelling, meditative arias, and mighty choruses sets St Matthew's account of Christ's betrayal, trial, and execution eloquently and emotionally.

Over the past 40 years, the AAM has made over 300 recordings of Baroque and Classical music, winning Brit and Gramophone Awards along the way. Remarkably, this is their first recording of the St. Matthew Passion. With a superlative cast including James Gilchrist, Sarah Connolly, Thomas Hobbs, Elizabeth Watts, Christopher Maltman, and Matthew Rose, and directed by Richard Egarr, this is a landmark project.

The Wells Jubilate is typical Rutter – brightly melodic, immediately communicative, and well calculated to bring executive satisfaction to the performers without over-stretching them technically.

Brass fanfares cap the organ accompaniment resplendently: it’s an effective opener, though perhaps the concluding Winchester Te Deum is even more stirringly celebratory. ‘Look to the Day’ (written for Cancer Research UK) is similarly tuneful and optimistic...

I personally prefer Rutter in less glib and comfortable mode: ‘Lord, thou hast been our refuge’, for instance, combines a resonant part for solo trumpet with a sustained seriousness in addressing the biblical text, plumbing deeper emotions than he finds in the more cosy, extrovert settings. ‘O Lord, thou hast searched me out’ (commemorating George Guest) is similarly reflective, cor anglais this time providing the obbligato commentary.

With Rutter himself conducting his own, outstanding Cambridge singers, these excellently recorded performances have a grip and authority hard to equal.

-- Terry Blain, BBC Music Magazine

The Wilten Boys’ Choir, conductor Johannes Stecher and the ensemble he founded, the Academia Jacobus Stainer, present the Weinachtsoratorium (Christmas Oratorio), BWV 248 of J.S. Bach. Composed for the choir of St. Thomas, the work is practically tailor-made for a mixed boys’ choir like the Wilten Boys’ Choir. Paul Schweinester, tenor, and Daniel Schmutzhard, baritone, two former members of the Wilten Boys’ Choir, who are today successful singers on the international stage take on the soloist parts. Recorded at the Wilten Basilica, Innsbruck, Austria.

Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937) is an important contemporary voice in vocal music, a fact highlighted by this new release of recent, spiritual, hauntingly beautiful vocal works, sung by the Latvian Radio Choir under their director Sigvards Kļava. During his artistic career Silvestrov has explored a number of musical styles and techniques; the demise of the Soviet Union, however, enabled Silvestrov to openly compose works of religious import, inspired and influenced by his love of the Russian Orthodox Church and imbued with his own unique sound.

Christmas, more than any other holiday, is deeply rooted in a nation’s culture. This is why Christmas carols from different cultures sound so vastly different from one another. This collection of songs includes music all the way from the Middle Ages to the present day. Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols is a notable track on this release, and is built on folk carols and considered by many to be one of the best Christmas cantatas. One of the world’s best choirs, the SWR Vokalensemble, performs these works.

A work of great depth and eloquence, and the longest work in Brahms’s œuvre, A German Requiem inspiration from Bach’s contrapuntal genius but avoids overt religious tradition. Brahms chose the texts himself, placing an emphasis on an affirmation of life with the suggestion that he would gladly have substituted ‘human’ for ‘German’ in the title. This release joins Antoni Wit’s ‘richly satisfying’ (Gramophone) recording of Brahms Choral Music [8.572694].

Includes christmas carol(s) by various composers. Ensemble: BBC Singers. Conductor: Stephen Cleobury. Soloist: Robert Quinney.

Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 was dedicated to Pope Paul V, and remains one of the great sacred masterpieces of the Baroque era. Monteverdi’s score features a stylistic variety uncommon to that time, grand choral and instrumental, solo motets, two settings of the Magnificat, duets and trios, and more than anything a sense of theater, which hearkens to the composition of Monteverdi’s operas which were being written around the same time. This new recording features authentic instrumentation, and is wonderfully interpreted by the Ensemble San Felice.

This mid-price collection of traditional songs (formerly 'The Lark in the Clear Air) includes John Rutter's widely-performed cycles 'A Sprig of Thyme' and 'Five Traditional Songs', alongside Vaughan Williams' 'Five English Folk Songs' and arrangements by other composers. Now with Rutter's arrangement of 'Searching for Lambs', never before released on CD.

Classical Music

• The poem cycle Canto General by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, about Latin America's struggle against colonialism, is a protest against lethargy and feelings of impotence by drawing on the roots, making historical contexts transparent and restoring man's own possibilities of development in awareness. • Hence, the Canto General has become a universal work with the message: "a different world is possible!" • Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis arranged parts of the poem cycle into an Oratorio for Two Solo Voices with a Mixed Choir and Orchestra. • This recording by the Choir of Erste Bank, supported by Protestant Choirs from Vienna, Lower Austria and Styria (choir master: Sybille von Both), soloists Julia Schilinski, mezzo soprano, and Sergio Cattaneo, baritone, and the Orquesta de nuestra tierra is conducted by Leopold Griessler.

This re-release of the Spring Symphony, complemented by two smaller but equally life-confirming works by Britten, marks the composer’s centenary year. It also forms part of Chandos’ Richard Hickox Legacy series. Hickox conducts the London Symphony Orchestra with the soloists Elizabeth Gale, Alfreda Hodgson, and Martyn Hill and a number of UK choirs.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Wonderfully evocative British choral music written recently, from three fine but lesser-known composers and the better-known Michael Berkeley. For the Williamson Missa Tertia, the singers are joined by the Choir of St. Mary Magdalene, Oxford.

This recording presents the complete surviving chamber music and chansons of Philip van Wilder. The program sets him in a historical context: downstream from Josquin and Gombert, collaborating with Tallis and a formative influence on Byrd. Cantores is an early-music choir formed from graduates of Exeter University by Dr David Allison which meets several times a year for specific projects, specializing in the music of the Renaissance.

The late Sir Michael Tippett’s oratorio A Child Of Our Time both re-affirmed and transformed the genre. + The most striking and brilliant transformation is the composer’s choice of the Negro Spiritual in place of the congregational hymn. + Composed between 1939-41 and premiered in 1944, it was born out of a very personal sense of human deprivation and hardship then afoot in 1930s England. + Recorded in 1992, this Chandos re-release, featuring an all African-American singing cast and the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, honors the legacy of the late English conductor Sir Richard Hickox.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Volume 7 of Rossini’s complete piano music, Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age), ranges across six of the fourteen albums to include works for both solo piano and for piano and voices. Two of the pieces – Andantino mosso (track 3), recently discovered in manuscript, and La notte di Santo Natale (track 5) receive their first recording. ‘Alessandro Marangoni sounds completely at home… and he presents the music with style, good humour and no mean virtuosity’ (MusicWeb International on 8.573107 / Volume 6).

"A commanding vocal and stage presence, bass-baritone George London, heard here in his only Elias recording, leads a noteworthy quartet of vocal soloists. Conductor Christopf von Dohnányi is best-known for his near twenty-year tenure as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra. Completed in 1846 after extensive revising, Elias proved to be Mendelssohn's last completed work of this scale and scope. Newly remastered."

Includes christmas carol(s) by various composers. Ensembles: Washington Men's Camerata, Washington Symphonic Brass.