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For many, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the sound of carols sung from King’s College Chapel, and each year over the festive period millions around the world enjoy the Choir’s A Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols. This two-part collection celebrates 100 years of the iconic service with a mix of brand-new performances and historical recordings not heard since the original BBC broadcasts.

Cambridges renowned Trinity College Choir, conducted by Richard Marlow, is heard in a 6-CD compilation of acclaimed Renaissance and early Baroque recordings. In the compositions by Lassus, Victoria, Praetorius, Sweelinck, Monteverdi and Schutz heard here, Gramophone has praised the choirs superb discipline fresh and natural voices as well as Marlows astute and imaginative direction His sensitivity and responsiveness are tireless.

Recorded before Sir Stephen Cleobury’s untimely passing in November 2019, King’s College presents a new account of one of the greatest masterpieces in sacred music, Bach’s St Matthew Passion. For this recording Cleobury led the King’s Choir and the Academy of Ancient Music alongside some of the most outstanding British singers performing today, headed by one of the finest Evangelists of our time, James Gilchrist. The album is accompanied by a booklet with over 60 pages of texts and photographs, including a full translation by Michael Marissen and a specially-commissioned essay by John Butt.

John Taverner (1490-1545) and William Byrd (1540-1623) born a generation apart, both hailed from Lincolnshire, and left a collection of choral works that rank (with that of Thomas Tallis) as some of the finest of its age, or indeed any other. Both men worked in turbulent times, the older Taverner grew up during the reign of Henry VII, and became Informator Choristarum at Cardinal College, Oxford, Cardinal Wolsey's new college in the university. Here Taverner recruited 16 boys and 12 men for the choir.

When King’s College, Cambridge was founded by King Henry VI in 1441, careful provision was made for a choral foundation of sixteen men and sixteen choristers to sing daily services in the Chapel. English worshippers of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were generous when it came to music, making regular donations and bequests to churches and monasteries, so that masses could be sung for the salvation of their souls. It is no coincidence that the music of this era should therefore have reached new heights of richness and complexity; indeed, England was home to some of the most elaborate polyphony composed anywhere in Europe.

Both Duruflé and Fauré wrote their Requiems for choir and organ first. The orchestrations were afterthoughts bending to the excesses of public appeal and publishers' demands, at least that's what I was taught in college. Both works can be wonderful with orchestra and on this CD, the consistently excellent St. Martin in the Fields gives a beautiful interpretation of the Fauré Requem with orchestra.

With various record labels compiling complete works to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the death of Bach, EMI's more accessible approach is this luxurious anthology of the Baroque master's sacred music. Over two and a half hours, this program encompasses the grand scale of the Magnificat in D (BWV 243) and Missa Brevis in A (BWV 234). Between these are scared cantatas, the very popular choral Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (BWV 140) contrasting with sensitive solo vocal writing in Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (BWV 12); motets; arias; and an organ prelude and fugue. It's a well-balanced program, covering every aspect of Bach's church music except the Passions.

Several generations of Bachs have been gathered by Richard Marlow and the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge for their programme of motets. All of them have been recorded at various times in the past but many only infrequently, and one or two, perhaps, now make their first appearance on CD. There is no dull music here and two of the pieces, at least, are of outstanding expressive beauty. The earlier of these is Johann Bach’s profoundly affecting Unser Leben ist ein Schatten (“Our life is but a shadow”). This member of the clan survived both the Black Death and the savage bombardment of Erfurt during the Thirty Years War.

The second release in our Magnificat series features nine settings of the Evening Canticles, sung daily at Evensong. The recording features Howells Collegium Regale and Julian Anderson's St John's Service, as well as settings by Berkeley, Jackson, Pärt, Sumsion, Swayne, Walton & Watson.