Ex Cathedra and Jeffrey Skidmore unearth more fascinating treasures with this latest anthology of Latin American music from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The first volume—‘New World Symphonies’, released in 2003 on CDA67380—has been hugely popular, getting regular airplay on Classic FM.
The works on this disc were chosen from the vast amount of extraordinary repertoire Jeffrey Skidmore discovered on research visits to the USA, Mexico and Bolivia.

Throughout this Warner Classics six disc set one remains impressed with Harnoncourt’s tightly controlled direction of his magnificent forces, employing tempi that always feel appropriate. The sound quality is of a high standard as is the interesting and informative annotation. A valuable set of Haydn sacred music that is perfect for dipping in and out.

Pier Francesco Caletti Bruni 'Francesco Cavalli' lived in Venice under the protection of the nobleman Federigo Cavalli, whose surname he adopted in gratitude. The musician dedicated his life as a composer to two musical forms: music theatre, for which he was appreciated throughout Europe and the sacred repertoire. Following his maestro Monteverdi, he composed sacred music in the Concertato style for double choir until near the end of his life when he published the three Vespers, among which the Vespers of the cinque Laudate ad uso della Cappella di S. Marco stands out as a work in its own class.

The Venetian triumph of a German in exile. After having been considered the "Alpha & Omega Musicorum" in Germany, in 1655 Rosenmüller succeeded in escaping from Saxony where he had been imprisoned for an offence against morality… Shortly afterwards he began a new life in the City of the Doges and went on to become one of the most highly esteemed composers of the day. Dominated by an impressive Dixit Dominus of 621 bars, these Vespers of the Blessed Virgin are in the direct lineage of a Venetian tradition already glorified by Monteverdi and Cavalli.

This is the second New Series album to feature the Stuttgart-based Ensemble Belcanto. Where its 2001 predecessor focused on contemporary composition by Wolfgang Rihm and others (Come un'ombra di luna), this disc looks at Hildegard of Bingen's Ordo Virtutum, written around 1150 and generally considered the first large-scale musical work beyond the prescribed form of the Mass liturgy. This is sacred music reflecting Medieval thought, as music and morality play are intertwined. In her creative interpretation, Belcanto leader Dietburg Spohr waives claims to 'objective' historical literalness. Instead, she and her fellow singers encounter the work as if it were written specifically for the Ensemble Belcanto: "We sought to free Hildegard from mystical-esoteric associations and to emphasize the work of an emancipated woman and composer." They have been performing the music of Hildegard von Bingen since the early 1990s, and view her compositions as a joyously experimental bridge between the Middle Ages and contemporary music.

Im Gegensatz zum berühmten späteren Amtsnachfolger J. S. Bach konnte Thomaskantor Sebastian Knüpfer vom politischen Arm ungehindert seinen musikalischen Fähigkeiten freien Lauf lassen. Das Ergebnis sind prächtige Psalm- und Choralkonzerte für den feierlichen Gottesdienst an der Thomaskirche.

Peter Schreier brought a lifetime's experience as a singer to the conductor's rostrum in his accounts of Mozart's Requiem, Coronation Mass, and motet Ave verum Corpus. The performances were recorded in Dresden between 1982 and 1992. A major plus is highly disciplined singing by the Leipzig Radio Chorus, whose clarity of diction and finely balanced ensemble adds much to your enjoyment of these performances; they're heard on their own account in the motet that concludes this reissue. The Requiem (in Süssmayr's completion) is powerfully and urgently driven.

This disc of Iberian and Latin American Renaissance music is a reissue cleverly disguised as a new release. It compiles music from several recordings by Catalonian visionary Jordi Savall, his luminous-voiced collaborator Montserrat Figueras, and his Hesperion XXI and Capella Reial de Catalunya ensembles, dressing them up with a new set of rather philosophical booklet notes on themes of change, of intercultural tolerance, and of the evolving nature of Christianity in the Iberian realm and in New Spain. Some might call this a cynical ploy, but actually Savall has always been moving in a circle, so to speak, spiraling inward toward a deeper musical understanding of the historical themes touched on here: the lingering effects of the legacy of medieval Iberia and its "mestissage" or mixture of cultures, the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles (Carlos) V (did you know that he was both the first monarch to be called "His Majesty" and the first to be honored with the claim that the "sun never set" on his empire?), and the relationships between cultivated and popular styles, both in Iberia and the New World.

A selection of music from the Italian Baroque contained in manuscripts held in the library of the cathedral of Aosta in Italy. The number of works in this collection is small, but of very high quality, demonstrating the high artistic quality of musical life in the cathedral at that time. Some of the composers are unknown, but familiar names include Alessandro Scarlatti and Francesco Maria Benedetti.

Catalan composer Bernat Vivancos's 'Blanc', released by Neu Records in 2013, was an acclaimed double album of premiere recordings by the Latvian Radio Choir, one of the world's finest chamber choirs, conducted by Sigvards Klava. This follow-up reunites the composer with these forces in a performance of his profound Requiem. The renowned musician Jordi Savall first encountered - and was greatly moved by - Vivancos's music through 'Blanc'. He says: "The innovative richness of the works by Bernat Vivancos are, I believe, the clearest and most striking proof of the vitality of a new musical Renaissance. His extraordinary talent and his profound spirituality are placed at the service of a process that is the invention of a new language which, in spite of its complexity and modernity, is capable of transmitting to us pure beauty and emotion." Vivancos composed his Requiem - scored for mixed choir, soloists, cello soloist (here Pau Codina), cello quartet, accordion and percussion - in memory of his father.

Sacred music written for female singers and instrumentalists of the Ospedali became celebrated during the 18th century. This unique musical tradition became widely famous largely through the works of such notable composers as Vivaldi, Hasse, Porpora and Galuppi, who were active as teachers at the four "Ospedali grandi".

Opera composer Puccini was a young man when he crafted this splendid work. Its text is the old-fashioned Roman Catholic Latin Mass. The title of the work derives from its longest component, the "Gloria." Youthful exuberance and optimism underlie the work.

Claudio Abbado’s 1981 performance of Berlioz’s Te Deum for three choruses and pipe organ easily outranks the handful of widely-available recordings of the work. Abbado’s closest competitor is 1969’s Sir Colin Davis with similar London forces on Philips, but Davis’ tenor soloist does not have the solid heroic quality of Mexican tenor Francisco Araiza, and Davis’ choirs are a little more recessed (although Abbado’s is not miked particularly close either), in particular the almost lost sound of Davis’ boys choirs which cut through forcefully in Abbado. In addition, Abbado moves purposefully forward through Berlioz’s treacherous choral/orchestral writing, whereas Davis takes his time, perhaps allowing more time for climactic build-up; however, I find Berlioz’s talent with choral writing was not his particular forte as it is not particularly melodic or thoughtful for singers, so I appreciate Abbado’s fluid, forward momentum.

Mozarts Große Messe, KV 427, ist Fragment geblieben und gehört dennoch zu den eindrucksvollsten Werken geistlicher Musik in Europa. Der Salzburger Meister folgt hier den Messemodellen Bachs (und Händels). Auch Spuren der italienischen Gesangstradition lassen sich erkennen, vor allem was die Ausarbeitung der Sopranpartien betrifft. Frieder Bernius, in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Musikwissenschaftler Uwe Wolf, hat den Mut, der ausgedehnten Diskographie zu dieser Messe eine weitere Einspielung hinzuzufügen (Kammerchor Stuttgart/Hofkapelle Stuttgart). Das Besondere an dieser Aufnahme ist der aus Praxis, theoretischen und musikhistorischen Überlegungen gespeiste Versuch, eine sehr diskret ergänzte Fassung dieser Messe vorzulegen.

The Sixteen, bright stars of the Baroque, have plenty to say on 20th-century repertoire (witness their excellent Britten series on Collins). Underpin them with the BBC Philharmonic and it might seem a magic formula. Ives’s unearthly The Unanswered Question holds few problems for instrumental players weaned on Maxwell Davies – no more than do the brilliant wind roulades of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. Deft BBC teamwork and a chamber articulation to woodwind and brass helps this Koussevitzky-commissioned masterpiece to shed its often hammy ‘big band’ sound, creeping closer to the subtle, leaner sonorities of his later choral works. It gains. The singing varies. Too many dynamic shifts sound prosaic or under-prepared; fortes are forced, with muddy results. The vocal blend (happier in lower voices) can seem haphazard and colours the Tippett, where the men’s roars – contrast the lovely, sensual soprano solo – seem crude. Get this disc, instead, for the rare, late Poulenc – his New York-commissioned Sept répons. It is a curiously under-recorded devotional work, bleeding with pathos yet pumping energy, its exoticism enhanced by slightly breathy, tender solos, and scintillatingly sung with just those crucial missing qualities of awe and freshness. A million times more refined than what goes before.