The turbulent years of Reformation and religious change in England presented composers working for the church with the continual challenge of having to adapt to rapidly changing musical requirements. Although little is known about the personal religious affiliation of composers such as Christopher Tye, Robert Parsons and Robert White, their Latin music represents by far the most interesting and significant musical thought of its time.

A Franco-Flemish composer and music theorist of the early Renaissance, Dufay was the central figure in the Burgundian School and was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century. His music was copied, distributed and sung across Europe and almost all composers of the succeeding generations absorbed some elements of his style. The Hilliard Ensemble is one of the world's finest vocal chamber groups, and is probably unrivalled for its formidable reputation in the fields of both early and new music. Its distinctive style and highly developed musicianship engage the listener as much in Medieval and Renaissance repertoire as in works specially written for the group by living composers. 'Guillaume Dufay' is the final disc in the Hilliard 'Live' series to be released on CORO. The first disc - Pérotin and the Ars Antiqua - won a Diapason d'Or. '...eloquence of worshipful music, winding through some amazing counterpoint.' - The Times 'Supremely musical and overflowing with food for thought.' - The Guardian

The sacred choral music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from Venice, especially that written for the splendour of St Mark’s, has a unique style. From the rich and sonorous sound world of the Gabrielis to the airy zestfulness of Caldara’s contemporary Vivaldi, this was music which dazzled the rest of Europe.

The famous Hilliard Ensemble presents a live tribute to the late fifteenth-century master composer Antoine Brumel, who was one of the most influential composers of his generation. This disc is the third of four live discs by The Hilliard Ensemble to be released on CORO. The first disc – Pérotin and the Ars Antiqua - has recently won a Diapason D’Or.

The perfect gift for Christmas – three of The Sixteen’s most celebrated festive CDs in a Boxset. From medieval carols with fiddles, harps and drums to the traditional carols we know and love, this collection includes favourite twentieth century English carols.

Recorded ‘as live’ in October 2006 following its performance at The Sixteen’s opening concert as Associate Artists of Southbank Centre, Brahms’ German Requiem one of the great choral masterpieces of all time. Brahms himself made a piano transcription of the orchestral parts of his magnificent Requiem. The arrangement for two players allows a degree of intimacy, precision and contrapuntal clarity that cannot be achieved in the orchestral version; indeed, at times one is reminded of the Liebeslieder-Walzer op. 52. In 1871 this version was given its English première conducted by Brahms’s friend Julius Stockhausen.  It is appropriate therefore that the piano used on this recording is a Bösendorfer of 1872 thus allowing us to experience the sort of sound Brahms himself would have heard.

The famous Hilliard Ensemble presents a tribute to the fifteenth-century master composer Ockeghem. Interspersed with the music are parts of Guillaume Crétin’s Lament on the Death of the Late Ockeghem, Treasurer of Saint Martin of Tours, in a specially commissioned translation, read by Bob Peck. This disc is the second of four live discs by The Hilliard Ensemble to be released on CORO. The first disc – Pérotin and the Ars Antiqua - won a Diapason D’Or.

Includes work(s) by Felice Anerio, Giovanni Palestrina, Gregorio Allegri. Ensemble: The Sixteen. Conductor: Harry Christophers.

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Hilliard Ensemble.

Recorded live at The Sixteen's Handel in Oxford Festival, 2006, Elin Manahan Thomas gives a performance of captivating communication and sparkling intelligence in these stunning and contrasting Handel Cantatas, bringing to life the world of four women, all of whom have been betrayed by love and its deceitful charms.

The small British chorus called the Sixteen and director Harry Christophers have delivered consistently popular recordings of Renaissance and Baroque music, maintaining very high standards of performance. Here they couple two of the most popular Baroque works of all, Vivaldi's Gloria in D major, RV 589, and Bach's Magnificat in D major, BWV 243, and the results are handsome indeed. The tenor of the performances flows from the conceptions of each work that Christophers expresses in one of the little personal essays that appears at the beginning of each booklet in this series: Vivaldi, he said, is "effective," and even operates in places here "at his simplest," while Bach is "complex." Some would use other words first, for each composer -- daring or kinetic for Vivaldi, devotional or a dozen other words for Bach. There are recordings that give Vivaldi in general and the Gloria in particular more of an edge; there are recordings of Bach that seem warmer, or more rooted in the sacred texts. But here, as usual, Christophers, the Sixteen, and the Symphony of Harmony & Invention Baroque orchestra play it straight up the middle and create accessible, appealing recordings using historical instruments. The Magnificat is really superior in the choral sections, with superb articulation of Bach's difficult interlocking runs of sixteenth notes; the building energy of the final three choruses is marvelously rendered, and the opening "Magnificat" is expansive and rich. The Vivaldi is sunny rather than triumphal, with the choir a bit reined in and rounded in tone in the famous opening "Gloria," but all the solos are top-notch, with the "Laudamus te" soprano duet of Lynda Russell and Gillian Fisher an especially lilting standout. The listener has many choices when it comes to recordings of these works, but it's hard to imagine these, the Bach especially, being substantially outdone.

James Manheim, All Music Guide

A collection of well-loved traditional Christmas Carols, perfect for creating a warm seasonal atmosphere and to sing along with.

Simple, sincere and thoroughly engaging -- American Record Guide

The major figure on this disc is Pelham Humfrey (1647–74), who is represented by seven anthems, though four of them are very brief, the shortest works on the disc. Two of his larger works, O Lord, my God (which leads the program) and By the waters of Babylon were on Nicholas McGegan’s Humfrey disc (16:5), and the shorter Wilt thou forgive that sin (also known as a hymn to God the Father) has been recorded more than a few times. The only anthem credited to John Blow (1649-1708), I will hearken, seems to be a first recording, one of two dozen symphony anthems that he wrote for the Chapel Royal. Henry Cooke (c. 1615–72), not to be confused with several Cookes who lived in other eras, is missing from every catalog I checked, so the two anthems here seem to be the first recordings of the composer. William Turner (1651–1740) is listed here only because he contributed to the “Club” Anthem (I will always give thanks), a piece of juvenilia composed by three young singers at the Chapel Royal. Judging by style, Humfrey wrote the beginning and the largest share, Turner wrote the bass solo that follows, and Blow wrote the rest. Turner is known for The king shall rejoice, written for the coronation of James II, a work that has been lost, though Simon Preston substituted another work for it in his recording (11:1).

The three principal names have more than this in common, for they were the first three masters of the choristers of the Chapel Royal after the Restoration. Training a dozen boys after the tradition had been interrupted for 11 years would have been difficult, but Captain Cooke simply went around and drafted the ablest boys from the country’s choral foundations. When he died in 1672, Humfrey succeeded him and married his daughter, but he lived only two years longer. Blow followed for the next 35 years. The anthems heard on this disc combine solo verses and choral sections with symphonies, lengthy interludes played by a consort of violins (there are only four here, with two theorbos and organ), replacing the sackbuts and cornets of earlier times.

O Lord, my God certainly deserves pride of place here, but Put me not to rebuke and O Lord, thou hast searched me out demonstrate that Cooke, his teacher, laid the foundation for the Restoration school of composition, for half of the dozen boys that started under him in 1661 made names for themselves. This is an unusually well-made collection, sharply focused in content, and beautifully sung and played in The Sixteen’s familiar style. The verse soloists are gratifying, a contrast to the embarrassing work sometimes heard from cathedral choirs that record this repertoire. An earlier disc of this kind (it also included O Lord, my God, though Purcell and Locke furnished most of the contents) was a similarly titled Erato LP by John Eliot Gardiner. (The notes here seem to quote all of the same contemporaries as Gardiner cited.) This is the finest survey of the Chapel Royal since that issue.

FANFARE: J. F. Weber

Bach was Leipzig’s Director Musices between 1723 and 1729, as well as being Cantor of St. Thomas’s School involving providing music for the four principal churches and also any other special sacred or secular occasion. During these years Bach supplied at least three complete annual cycles of Cantatas for the church year. The rich variety of his writing for solo voices and orchestra along with thrilling choral textures is well represented in these three cantatas.

Includes work(s) by various composers.

These works show some of the breadth and range of Britten's choral writing, embracing the masque from his opera Gloriana, his own take on the English part song tradition in Five Flower Songs, and his last work for unaccompanied voices, Sacred and Profane. The latter sets medieval texts described herein as 'a mixture of the devotional and the rumbustiously secular'.

On Christmas Day 1554 the Spanish Armada was a long way off on the horizon. Mary Tudor had married Prince Philip of Spain, and in celebration of her pregnancy Tallis had composed the Mass Puer natus, which may well have been performed in St Paul's Cathedral on this special day. For this splendid ceremony the English Chapel Royal and choir of St Paul's were joined by Prince Philip of Spain's Capilla Flamenca to sing music by great composers from both countries. This recording presents a number of works which were likely to have been performed by these choirs on this special occasion.

The sombre colours of Schütz’s moving funeral music are finely brought out in this collection, which also includes several varied smaller settings of standard liturgical texts. The resonant acoustic enhances the inventiveness of the writing.
Performance: 5 (out of 5); Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- George Hall, BBC Music Magazine

Portuguese sacred music of this period inhabits a distinctive sound world that can be seen as a continuation and development of the Spanish style of composers such as Morales and Guerrero, but it is often allied to a tantalizing harmonic richness and colour that is found nowhere else. Its individuality parallels the new and astonishing Manueline architecture in which much of it would have been performed.

The long-established tradition of devotion to the Virgin Mary resulted in some superb settings from Spanish composers. Supreme amongst them, Victoria set some of his finest music to Marian texts. This recording showcases works for eight parts, some of them for two antiphonal choirs discreetly accompanied by organ and bajón, all displaying the magnificent fervent sonorities for which he is famous.

Britten's 'A Ceremony of Carols' is a masterpiece composed on board ship as Britten returned to England from the U.S.A. in 1948, a touching evocation of boyhood lost but never forgotten. 'A Boy was Born' is a work that first made Britten famous, based on a theme and variations of astonishing ingenuity. The 'Missa Brevis', written for the boys of Westminster Cathedral, is a gem that is some ways looks forward to the 'War Requiem' which came two years later.

The nature of 'Alexander's Feast' is perhaps better summoned up by its other title, 'The Power of Music'. It is a celebratory ode for St. Cecilia's Day, written by Dryden in 1697 for the City of London's traditional celebration of the patron saint of music, and set in celebratory style by Handel in 1736. At its first performance that year, he incorporated two delightful concertos, one for harp and the other for organ, and these are included on this recording.

Some of the most important and beautiful a cappella works of well-known 'names' Barber, Bernstein and Copland are here set alongside two quite extraordinary slightly less known composers. Irving Fine was an exact contemporary of Copland's and, although born a decade after the great master, he died some years before him. His music is a revelation - always vivid in expression and ever faithful to these extraordinary Ben Johnson poems. Del Tredici's 'Acrostic Song' is glorious, pure, unadulterated 'schmaltz'.

Frank Martin was arguably Switzerland’s greatest composer.  His shimmering Mass for Double Choir, completed in 1926 as ‘an affair between God and himself’, is one of the finest settings of the 20th century, yet it had to wait forty-one years to be shared with others in its first performance. This collection of his choral music also includes his cantata for Switzerland’s National Day and the Ode to Music, along with some charming part-songs. Eclectic and technically superb these pieces display a style that is serenely individual.

This disc combines some of Henry Purcell's most powerful masterpieces. Love's Goddess Sure Was Blind, an exuberant tribute to the young Queen Mary, and some of his most eloquent compositions, written for her funeral. Love's Goddess Sure was Blind, written in exuberant and florid style for the birthday of the much loved young Queen Mary ends, extraordinarily, with a reflection on the grief her eventual death would provoke. It was less than six years later that the prophesied mourning became a reality, when, in her early thirties, she succumbed to smallpox. Purcell's eloquent compositions for her funeral are acknowledged as some of his most powerful masterpieces marrying a genuine of expression of grief (Purcell greatly admired the witty, musical Mary) with a characteristic sophistication of style.