Without doubt, this is one of the most important recordings of music by Janácek in recent years. Paul Wingfield’s restoration of the original performing version of the Glagolitic Mass is a fine piece of work and deserves to become the standard text. Those familiar with the Mass will notice changes right at the start, where the ‘Intrada’ (normally the conclusion) appears twice, at both the beginning and end. This introduces a number of fundamental alterations to rhythm and instrumentation which make for a markedly different whole: undoubtedly harder to perform, but infinitely sharper in outline.

Trésors du Moyen-Âge (Treasures of the Middle Ages) is a monumental and deeply evocative four-CD box set released by RCA Red Seal in 2004, offering a comprehensive panorama of European musical creation from the 12th through the 15th centuries. This collection intricately balances the sacred and the profane, pairing celestial liturgical masterworks with the earthier, vibrant expressions of secular courtly love and folk traditions. Listeners are guided through the hauntingly beautiful mystic visions of Hildegard von Bingen, the pioneering Notre Dame polyphony of Pérotin, and Guillaume de Machaut's structural landmarks, alongside the timeless verse of troubadours like Jaufré Rudel and Richard the Lionheart. Spanning everything from Icelandic sagas and Breton prophecies to Spanish Cantigas de Santa Maria, Sephardic Jewish ballads, and theatrical liturgical dramas like Le Jeu de Daniel, this box set serves as an invaluable, pristine audio archive of the medieval mind and spirit.

This live 2008 performance of Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem is John Eliot Gardiner's second recording of the piece, the first from 1991, and he uses the same performing forces, the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. This second interpretation is part of his Brahms series, begun in 2008, which includes the four symphonies, for the label Soli Deo Gloria. The performance is approximately the same length as his earlier version and clocks in at less than 65 minutes, considerably shorter than the usual performance of the Requiem, making it one of the shortest recorded versions, in fact. Gardiner generates genuine excitement with his propulsive tempos in the faster sections.

You have to look at the German-language tracklist to see what you're getting here: not two separate "Creation Masses," but the late Haydn Mass in B flat major, H. 22/13 ("Schöpfungsmesse"), composed in 1801, along with a mass by Salzburg-based composer Luigi Gatti. This is not an original work but an adaptation of Haydn's oratorio The Creation, with texts from the mass fitted to musically and liturgically appropriate melodies. This work, rediscovered only recently, was apparently one of a number of sacred adaptations of secular works that appeared around this time.

On Il Cerchio Interno, the brilliant Italian piano virtuoso and avant-garde philosopher Stefano Battaglia delivers a deeply spiritual, intensely focused, and masterfully poetic solo studio document. Released in 1999 by the classical-leaning independent label Symphonia, this exquisite solo performance captures Battaglia stripping away all ensemble clutter to engage in a profound acoustic meditation, seamlessly dissolving the boundaries between radical free improvisation, European jazz textures, and modern classical minimalism. Spanning 57 minutes of immaculate high-fidelity design, the 9-track landscape operates with an intimate, highly focused, and fluidly shifting kinetic energy. The album runs masterfully through stark emotional and structural architecture, firing off crystalline solo statements like the opening title cut Il Cerchio Interno, Lapsit Exillis, and the sprawling, deeply moving 10-minute centerpiece Requiem Et Danse Pour Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn. Driven entirely by his flawless technical control, surprising silent pauses, and a deep sense of sacred resonance, this pristine archive remains an indispensable masterclass for serious solo piano purists and avant-garde jazz collectors worldwide.

Renowned conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads an exceptional cast and ensemble in his upcoming album featuring a new recording of Mozart’s Requiem and Great Mass in C minor. Recorded live at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden in summer 2025, the album brings together two of Mozart’s most profound and spiritually resonant masterpieces. Joined by soloists Ying Fang, Emily D’Angelo, Stanislas de Barbeyrac, and Michael Volle, alongside the RIAS Kammerchor and Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Nézet-Séguin presents interpretations that reveal both the dramatic intensity and transcendent beauty of these landmark works. The programme reflects the conductor’s deep affinity for Mozart and his commitment to exploring the emotional and spiritual dimensions of the composer’s music. Richly detailed and thoughtfully conceived, this recording offers a compelling new perspective on two cornerstones of the choral repertoire and marks a significant addition to Mozart’s recorded legacy.

Agnew's close attention to textural nuance enables us to discover many a subtle detail in the music. His declamation is clear and authoritative and his ability to embrace comfortably the high…

Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1740) was an influential teacher, having written 'Gradus ad Parnassum' which codified compositional principles for musical training throughout the classical era. His compositions include abundant church music, operas, and numerous suites and trio sonatas. Counterpoint in his compositions was a hallmark of his style but did not keep him from incorporating modern tendencies in his music. The 'Missa Corporis Christi' was written in February, 1713, probably written for the next Feast of Corporis Christi, which fell on June 15 in that year.

'Jonas' and 'Dives Malus' are particularly showy examples of the "sacred oratorios" with Latin texts chiefly taken from the Bible, which were extremely popular among the Italian aristocracy, both secular and clerical, throughout the 17th Century. Such musical theater pieces were the Counter-reformation's answer to the opera and secular oratorio, usually based on tales from Graeco-Roman sources, beloved of the Humanists. If any difference in the music is to be heard, it is that the sacred oratorios are more purely aesthetic and intellectual, while the secular oratorio is more easily comprehended by the untrained listener.

In the summer of 1717, after performing his Water Music during a royal cruise on the Thames, Handel began composing for James Brydges (1674-1744), who became the first Duke of Chandos and created the Cannons Concert at his estate in Cannons (near Edgware), with ten instrumentalists and three singers. Handel composed eleven anthems and a Te Deum for him from August 1717 onwards, as well as transposing and revising As pants the hart (HWV 251b). O sing unto the Lord a new song (HWV 249b) is an adaptation of an anthem written three years earlier for the Chapel Royal.

Alessandro Scarlatti is a great man but his compositions are very difficult, in a theatre audience of a thousand people only 20 will understand them, thus said Count Francesco Zambeccari, an influential contemporary, and it is a testimony of the skill, complexity and depth of his rich music, a far cry from the facile and fashionable composers of his day. The Oratorio per la Santissima Trinita was composed in 1715, written at the mature age of 50, specifically intended for performance in Naples. The music is at the service of the drama, in a musical action that flows almost without caesura, presenting the richness of Scarlattis invention, always backed up by extremely in-depth knowledge of all the best composition techniques of the long tradition of the Italian School.

Membra Jesu Nostri (The Limbs of our Lord Jesus) is the single largest and most compelling of the 110 or so sacred vocal works left us by Dutch-German master Dietrich Buxtehude. Buxtehude is better known for his organ music and is rightfully acknowledged as a formative influence on Johann Sebastian Bach. However, Buxtehude's vocal output is slightly larger than that for organ, and he was a key player in the refinement of the German sacred concerto into what we now call the sacred cantata, which he and his wife inherited from its creator and his predecessor, Franz Tunder, in the town of Lübeck. In the years following Buxtehude's death in 1707, German composers of all kinds were gainfully employed writing cantatas in the thousands, Georg Philipp Telemann produced nearly 2,000 of them on his own.

St John’s Passion is a newly discovered masterpiece of the Italian baroque. The autograph manuscript is in the Biblioteca dei Filippini in Naples. The Evangelist is a countertenor and Jesus and Pilate are tenors. The choir is the crowd and the accompaniment is a string quartet. An Italian harpsichord and an organo di legno have been used for the basso continuo and they are joined by a harp.

World premiere recordings of the Magnificat as well as the festive music Die Himmel erzahlen die Ehre Gottes by C. P. E. Bach. A rousing and convincing interpretation by the Basel Madrigalists, L'arpa festante and renowned soloists under the direction of Fritz Naf. Throughout his life, C. P. E. Bach esteemed his Magnificat as one of his most important works. Here it is presented in the rarely heard early Leipzig version from 1749, with which the son wanted to recommend himself as a potential successor to his father in the office of Kantor at St. Thomas's Church. It fulfils all the criteria that the aesthetics of the time demanded of a large-scale sacred composition: grandeur, dignity, polyphonic and concertante choral movements, sensitive and pathetic arias, and a grand concluding double fugue.

After a widely acclaimed St John Passion in 2020 (Gramophone Editor's Choice, BBC Music Magazine Choice, Trophée Radio Classique), Philippe Herreweghe and his Collegium Vocale Gent continue their in-depth exploration of the works of the composer who has earned them worldwide fame. Of the two cantatas recorded here, Es ist dir gesagt, Mensch, was gut ist BWV 45, written in 1726, is built around a very virtuosic, almost operatic bass solo setting scriptural words of Christ. Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl, BWV 198, which dates from the following year, was composed for the funeral of Christiane Eberhardine, Electress of Saxony and titular Queen of Poland, the daughter of the Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth and an ardent Lutheran, whose death had deeply affected the people of Leipzig.