This release is likely to get a good deal of publicity due to its status as the final release of Stephen Cleobury as director of the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. However, as president of the Herbert Howells Society, he may not be through with performing the music of this composer just yet. Cleobury deserves kudos for this rather challenging double album; he might easily have compiled a set of favorites of some kind, and enjoyed general acclaim. Instead, he has chosen to go out with a piece of work that makes a deeper connection with tradition. Even though he did not succeed Howells as an organist at Cambridge, he certainly lived and breathed his music, and is as fine an interpreter of it as anyone alive.

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.