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Roland Wilson has a remarkable talent for handling the music of the 16th and 17th centuries. His impressive reconstruction of Heinrich Schutz's Dafne, the first German opera, remains well remembered. His current work will undoubtedly find it's place alongside it: This is how the grand Festive Mass may have sounded, with which all of Venice in 1631 celebrated the end of a plague epidemic that had claimed a third of the population. The Doge fulfilled his vow and commissioned the construction of the Santa Maria della Salute church. The Serenissima Repubblica rejoiced, and Claudio Monteverdi provided music whose splendor was hardly to be surpassed. Among other things, he used "slide trumpets", which allowed for extraordinary tones: they can be seen in old paintings and are heard - reconstructed - in this recording. This is how a republic once expressed it's gratitude.

Learn more about this recording on the Naxos Classical Spotlight podcast!

Held in high esteem by his contemporaries, Orfeo Vecchi stands out as a remarkable figure with regard to the sacred repertoire he produced from the late 1500s. Respectful of the written texts while elegantly expressing pictorial content through subtle dialogue, antiphony and counterpoint, the 20 pieces of the Motectorum sex vocibus liber tertius form a rich and eclectic collection that fully reveals Vecchi’s mastery and religious inspiration. This world premiere recording has been made by musicians involved in recovering the wealth of unpublished materials held in Vercelli Cathedral, where Vecchi studied and worked for much of his career.

In the last decade, research in the Genoa archives has revealed a series of important manuscripts, one of which is Saverio Mercadante’s Messa solenne. This magnificent score requires four vocal soloists, a male choir – women were then forbidden to sing in church – and a large orchestra with extensive concertante roles for cor anglais and violin. It was premiered in January 1868, two years before Mercadante’s death, and shows the composer’s artistic maturity at its peak: opulent orchestration, extensive counterpoint, intricate instrumental textures, rich lyricism and fugal mastery. This world première recording amplifies the significance of the Genoese musical tradition.

The K�lner Akademie, under the artistic direction of Michael Alexander Willens, presents J. S. Bach: Lutheran Masses BWV 233-236, a monumental exploration of the composer's four Kyrie-Gloria Masses. Written in the 1730s, during a period of profound artistic consolidation, these works reveal Bach at his most resourceful. Drawn largely from his finest cantata music, the Masses showcase his unparalleled ability to transform earlier material through refined counterpoint, enriched orchestration, and deep sensitivity to the Latin Ordinary. Long overshadowed by the Mass in B minor, these so-called "Lutheran Masses" emerge here as brilliant creations in their own right, each shaped with architectural clarity: six movements, impeccably balanced between choral grandeur and intimate arias. In this cycle, Bach fuses theological tradition with inventive musical craft. Whether reworking festive choruses, expanding expressive arias, or integrating older settings with newly imagined timbres, he elevates the transformation of earlier material into a profound creative process - producing music that feels both familiar and entirely renewed. By gathering the four Masses into a unified artistic vision, The K�lner Akademie illuminates their shared structural features, vibrant instrumentation, and emotional breadth.

In the last decade of his life, Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) worked as a church musician in his hometown of Nuremberg. In this capacity, he was extremely productive, even by the standards of the time: he set the Magnificat, the Virgin Mary's hymn of praise to the greatness of the Lord, who chose her to be the mother of the Savior, almost a dozen times for Protestant vespers services. And he did so with admirable creative imagination and a feeling for instrumental colors that still has an immediate effect today: as in the first episode of this series, we are confronted here with a full-bodied, pithy life that by no means perceives the world as a vale of tears. The Himlische Cantorey, under its founder, conductor, and tenor Jan Kobow, once again lives up to its name.

REVIEW:

The Himlische Cantorey is the perfect advocate of Pachelbel’s oeuvre. The ensemble is impeccable, and the solo contributions of the individual singers are indeed impressive. Veronika Winter is the ideal interpreter of ‘Mein Fleisch,’ and Joel Frederiksen delivers an incisive performance of ‘Ach Herr, wie ist meiner Feinde so viel.’ Veronika Skpulik needs to be mentioned for her highly impressive interpretations of the obbligato violin parts.

— musica Dei donum (Johan van Veen)

On February 1, 2025, Ivan Repusic, chief conductor of the Munich Radio Orchestra, directed Boris Papandopulo's 1942 Croatian Mass for soloists and a cappella choir in Munich's Prinzregententheater with the Bavarian Radio Chorus. BR-KLASSIK is now presenting this outstanding interpretation of the impressive sacred composition on CD as a live recording. The Croatian composer and conductor Boris Papandopulo (1906-1991) worked as a choirmaster, conductor and opera director in Split, Rijeka, Zagreb and Sarajevo. He created more than 400 compositions, spanning almost every genre. Although of Greek origin, Papandopulo was deeply rooted in the Croatian musical tradition, and his broad stylistic spectrum extended to neo-classicism, jazz, pop and folk music. His works combine elements of Croatian folk music with twelve-tone music and demand a high level of virtuosity. Papandopulo completed his training in Zagreb and at the New Conservatory in Vienna, spending the majority of his life in Croatia. The Croatian Mass is a sacred work in the spirit and style of centuries-old Croatian vocal music as well as being a practical choral composition. It is composed without orchestral or organ accompaniment, as Croatian choral music is almost exclusively sung a cappella. Papandopulo composed the mass for the First Croatian Choral Society Kolo, which he directed from 1928 to 1934 and again from 1938 to 1946. He completed his Croatian Mass in 1938, and it premiered in Zagreb on April 1, 1942, performed by the Croatian Choral Society Kolo under the composer's direction. Although the Croatian translation of the Roman Catholic liturgy gives the work a certain national flavour, the piece is primarily influenced by the tradition of old Dalmatian church hymns. Composed in a polyphonic style, it's syllabic and diatonic text settings are generally characteristic of Croatian vocal music.

Instructing and educating Christians on the one hand and delighting their minds on the other, so that the words and truths of the Holy Scripture would be anchored deeply within them - this was the purpose of the sacred cantata. No master of the Baroque era wrote more of these than Georg Philipp Telemann. He approached this seemingly 'tedious work' with such incredible imagination that his congregations could never be bored. One need only listen to the so-called French Cycle (1713-14). To this end, Vol. 4 contributes ten more first recordings. There are certainly meditative moments in both the music for Advent presented here and the cantatas written for the 'normal' Sundays of the church year; but these works predominantly feature colourful, enormously picturesque music throughout. They always get straight to the heart of the worship service's message and are still instantly appealing today.

With this release, cpo, the Gutenberg Soloists, and the Neumeyer Consort under Felix Koch have now completed an impressive five of the planned seven parts of their shared journey-on the way to what promises to be the first and, for a long time to come, likely the only and uniquely comprehensive recording of the cantatas that the extraordinarily industrious Georg Philipp Telemann composed in 1713/14 for the services at Frankfurt's Barfu�erkirche. This latest volume is devoted to the feasts of Ascension and Pentecost and also includes additional works designated for the Sundays after Trinity-each of them a smaller or greater marvel, rich in imagery that appeals to all the senses and pays full tribute to the instructive texts of the poetic pastor Erdmann Neumeister.

Klaudia Rabiega: Dona Nobis Pacem Sacred Choral Works