Vox Cantoris

The composer Friedrich Gernsheim, who was highly respected during his lifetime, is largely unknown today. Yet, especially in his choral compositions, he broke away from traditional ideas of form at an early stage and was thus ahead of many of his contemporaries. With this recording, Tristan Meister and Vox Quadrata have set themselves the goal of bringing the forgotten choral works of the Jewish composer back into the public consciousness.

Everyone loves a carol - in the end, even Scrooge. They have the power to summon up a special kind of midwinter mood, like the aroma of mince pies and mulled wine and the twinkle of lights on a tree. It’s a kind of magic. In this new accompanying recording, Andrew Gant’s choir Vox Turturis bring these carols to life with captivating performances of classics such as ‘The Angel Gabriel’, ‘Adeste fideles’ and ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’. Christmas Carols brims with anecdote, expert knowledge and Christmas spirit. It is a fittingly joyous account of one of our best-loved musical traditions.

This superb album commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation puts Martin Luther’s defiant act in musical context, celebrating some of his collaborators. Vox Luminis have made some excellent—and award-winning—albums, and this is one of their finest. Ambitious in scope, and imaginatively programmed, it finds the Belgian group with organist Bart Jacobs in top form. In addition to the obvious names, like Schütz, Praetorius, and Scheidt, we encounter some of the lesser-known composers of Luther’s time. This is not just historically important—it's also musically satisfying.

Alexander Campkin is renowned as a leading young choral composer who has been commissioned by some of the most prestigious musical organisations in Britain. True Light reveals the energy and majestic sound world that he commands, as well as qualities of reflective intimacy. His Missa Brevis was inspired by seeing a beam of sunlight pierce a cloud of moving incense, the resultant music being built around a sustained pitch, ebbing and flowing. In The First Kiss, he sets two poignant and daring Epigrams by the Greek philosopher Strato.

Together with a horn quartet led by the renowned horn player Marc Gruber and the Schubert expert Paul Sturm on the fortepiano, a companion from a time with the Windsbacher Knabenchor, as well as a string ensemble, Sonat Vox present a compilation of selected romantic choral movements by composers such as Franz Schubert, Anton Bruckner and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Sonat Vox illuminate motifs such as friendship, love, closeness to home and nature, but also address their opposites: longing, separation, loneliness and loss.

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.

Orpheus uncut is an imaginary web-opera conceived by the highly innovative conductor Martin Wahlberg and his Orkester Nord. Born out of the pandemic crisis, this six-part webseries focuses on the well-known Orpheus myth, that it undertakes to present in its full, uncut version.

Johannes Brahms drew texts from various Biblical sources for his Deutsches Requiem . As we hear in his choral music, he had a passion for polyphony and was inspired by models from the great Lutheran tradition of the late Renaissance and the Baroque. Ricercar and Vox Luminis have explored this early repertoire with the same passion for many years now, although with no less admiration for Brahms's masterpiece.

Hans Leo Hassler is considered one of the most significant personalities among Late Renaissance composers in the German-speaking world.

Among the most successful works written by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) in London is his ode "Alexander's Feast or The Power of Music". Handel composed this piece as an homage to Saint Cecilia.