The Singapore Symphony and its music director Hans Graf present a recording of Józef Kozłowski’s Requiem, together with the Singapore Symphony Chorus & Youth Choir, as well as a quartet of outstanding soloists: Olga Peretyatko (soprano), Olesya Petrova (mezzo-soprano), Boris Stepanov (tenor) and Christoph Seidl (bass). The Requiem (1798) was commissioned to Kozłowski by the abdicated King Stanisław of Poland, and can be perceived as a requiem not just for the monarch, but for the entire Polish nation, absorbed by the Russian state during the 1780s.

In the middle of the 16th century, the Geneva Psalter infected the whole of Reformed Europe – Switzerland included – with a true psalm fever. The first complete collection of all 150 psalms, promoted by the Genevan reformer Jean Calvin, was published in 1562. The psalm verses were translated into French and provided with melodies by various Genevan cantors.

Michael Alexander Willens führt dieses Werk in solistischer Besetzung auf und erzielt dadurch ein Höchstmaß an Klarheit, Homogenität und Stringenz. Ein wichtiger Baustein für die Geschichte der oratorischen Passion.

Hyperion’s Record of the Month for August by Polyphony and the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Stephen Layton portrays the ultimate dramatic event in history—the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, expressed through the raw emotional power of one of Scotland’s most distinguished and vital composers, James MacMillan.

In 1779 he was elected maestro di cappella at the cathedral of Milan, where he remained until 1784. Here he exercised his true vocation of composer, in addition to at least twenty of his most successful operas, a vast amount of sacred music for the cathedral, and educating a number of clever pupils, the most distinguished of whom was Cherubini.

Conductor Diego Fasolis and his Coro della Radio Svizzera always can be counted on for a very good show, and this one, featuring two well-known if not necessarily top-drawer Handel works, is no exception. The early Dixit Dominus, with its Vivaldian "De torrente in via" movement and other Italian stylistic elements, is appropriately lively and crisply articulated in the fast sections and fully indulgent of the slow passages, allowing us to hear in gorgeous detail the promising signs of Handel's germinating genius.

Like many of even the most prolific and celebrated composers of the sixteenth century, Jacobus Clemens non Papa (‘not the Pope’) has offered the history books little factual material with which to work. In contrast to the paucity of biographical material, however, many sources of Clemens' music survive. Indeed, he is one of the most widely published musicians of the entire century with fifteen Masses, over two hundred motets, many Dutch psalms and French chansons to his name.

Sergio Vartolo gave us a broader understanding of Palestrina's output of Masses by recording for another label a group of less familiar Mass settings, many for the first time, that offer a contrast with the more familiar solemn polyphonic style.

Vox Luminis has teamed up with the Freiburger Barockorchester again, and together they celebrate music for Ascension Day. This topic inspired great composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, four of whose Ascension cantatas have been preserved. The festive and colourful Cantata BWV 128 was composed towards the end of Bach’s second year in Leipzig. The Ascension Oratorio BWV 11 was written for larger forces and ends with a triumphant chorus. In the case of Georg Philipp Telemann, more than thirty cantatas for Ascension Day alone have survived. The cantata Ich fahre auf zu meinem Vater (I ascend unto my Father) was composed in 1721 and receives its world premiere recording here. Lionel Meunier’s ensemble and the FBO give a fervent rendering of this captivating music with its texts focusing on the afterlife.

Prior to Guillaume de Machaut's Notre Dame Mass, a complete polyphonic setting of the Mass Ordinary in the third quarter of the fourteenth century, inaugurating a tradition that has come down to the present time, various anonymous composers made experimental steps in that direction, creating several related mass movements. This disc by the innovative French group Ensemble Organum is essentially a recording of one of those fragments, the so-called Mass of Toulouse. In order to create a complete "Missa Gotica" (Goths, by the way, may enjoy the booklet's brief exegesis on why the music of the Middle Ages was later termed Gothic), director Marcel Pérès joins the Toulouse fragments to another early mass pair, the Gloria and Credo known together as the Mass of Barcelona.

Jennifer Vyvyan was one of the most revered sopranos of her generation. Her career was particularly associated with Britten operas, for which she premiered many roles. But the scope of her talent was particularly wide, and she also excelled in early music and sacred works. Here she is featured in the rare Magnificat of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach conducted by Geraint Jones.

Jennifer Vyvyan was one of the most revered sopranos of her generation. Her career was particularly associated with Britten operas, for which she premiered many roles. But the scope of her talent was particularly wide, and she also excelled in early music and sacred works. In this recording from her prime of Beethoven’s Mass in C she teams up with Richard Lewis, Monica Sinclair and Marian Nowakowski.

The young Russian soprano makes her solo debut on Decca with cantatas by Handel, Mozart, Porpora and Vivaldi which showcase her scintillating coloratura, tonal clarity and warmth, and radiant middle register; Il Giardino Armonico and Giovanni Antonini accompany with panache.

In their first recording for CORO The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, with director Mark Williams, explore the repertoire that has provided the bedrock of the college’s musical life for the last 500 years, all of which was written for the end of the day. Much music associated with evening time is naturally calm and soothing, and would satisfy those seeking transcendental beauty in the form of unchallenging ‘sound baths’, but this collection also seeks to challenge, contrasting contemporary settings with music from the 16th century. We hope, through this range of works, to capture something of that liminal space between day and night that is characterised by Evensong, and to lead the listener into that ‘peace that passes all understanding’. The album showcases works by composers from John Sheppard to Joanna Marsh, and features much-loved pieces such as Hubert Parry’s Lord, let me know mine end and John Tavener’s The Lord’s Prayer as well as new additions to the Evensong repertory such as Grayston Ives’ In pace and Piers Connor Kennedy’s O nata lux.

A collection of works representative of a school of Flemish composers living in Madrid towards the end of the Renaissance and all employed by Philip II of Spain, who held composers from the Low Countries in particularly high regard. La Hèle’s Mass, here receiving its first complete recording, is a major discovery.