Levens Deum

An impressive testament of the famous Charpentier Te Deum, H 146, this recording is full of life robust, yet refined! The vigor of the Choir brings listeners the majesty of music from Chicago s Historic St. John Cantius Church. While Charpentier s masterpiece is the crown jewel of this recording, there are other gems , including the charming Piccolomini Mass of Mozart.

This recording from the 2018 Göttingen Handel Festival presents two rarely heard works by Georg Friedrich Haendel: The Choice of Hercules and the Te Deum for the Victory of Dettingen. In The Choice of Hercules from 1751, Handel musically processes the mythical theme of Hercules at the crossroads, whereby Hercules' vacillation between virtue and lust is ideal for the back and forth in the search for the right path in life.

Jean Guyot was another of the composers of the post-Josquin generation active in the Low Countries in the mid-sixteenth century. (He was also a priest, author and teacher, although the details of much of his life remain vague.) Cinquecento has previously explored his secular music (on Amorosi pensieriCDA68053), but it was Guyots sacred music which was largely responsible for the high reputation he seemingly enjoyed in his lifetime. Cinquecento proves equally authoritative in both.

On this BR-KLASSIK recording of sacred music by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (b. 1935), the regularly award-winning Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, conducted by Peter Dijkstra, is joined by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, a frequent occurrence in their concert series that regularly include sacred music from the 19th through the 21st c. The present three compositions were written in 1984 and 1990 in the composer's own tintinnabulation style of composition (from the Latin word for the 'ringing of bells'). In his Te Deum, Pärt makes a conscious departure from the traditionally powerful and festive sound of such precursors as Charpentier, Bruckner and Verdi. The restraint of the Wallfahrtslied (Pilgrims' Song), a setting of Psalm 121, evokes the ancient Judeo-Christian tradition of psalm recitation. The Berliner Messe (Berlin Mass) is so named because it was first performed in the city's St. Hedwig's Cathedral (1990) to mark the German Katholikentag (Catholics Day).

Of all the performances of the Te Deum conducted during Lully's lifetime, history retains only the last, which sealed the composer's death in 1686: it was while beating time that, carried away by his zeal, he pierced his foot with the end of his cane… Ten years earlier, Lully composed this considerable score, for the christening of his own son, thus establishing an "official" genre for a century. Also intended to celebrate the great events of the reign, the grand motet Exaudiat Te Dominus is a dazzling glorification of the King, whose arms God has come to bear. Stephane Fuget, with his ensemble Les Epopees, brings to a close this collection devoted to Lully's sumptuous Grands Motets, accompanied by the Pages et Chantres of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles: To the Glory of God and the King!