'The Dream of Gerontius' is probably Edward Elgar's masterpiece and certainly one of the glories of the English oratorio tradition. A setting of Cardinal Newman's poem about a man's death and the journey of his soul toward heaven, it is one of the most heartwarming affirmations of faith and salvation in all of music and also a work of great intensity and passion, influenced by both Mahler and Italian opera. Several great British conductors have left their mark on 'Gerontius,' but none was more strongly associated with it than Sir John Barbirolli, who directed it many times before making this famous recording, which he regarded as a testament of his own faith, in 1964. While Barbirolli's Halle Orchestra and the combined choirs distinguish themselves mightily, the crowning asset of this vividly dramatic reading is Janet Baker's glowing performance as the Angel, a breath of life which makes an already powerful experience unforgettable.

Several masses with large orchestration attest to the outstanding compositional skills of the Salzburg master Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704) in coping with large ensembles. As usual in Salzburg, Biber expects polychoral performances. The church music at the Salzburg cathedral drew its orientation from the performance practice in Venice. The Missa Alleluia was probably composed after 1690 and certainly before 1698, because a manuscript was made in Kremsmunster that year. The original score and sheets from Salzburg are lost. Excellent copies have been preserved at the Upper Austrian abbey at Kremsmunster: they serve as a basis for the present recording. Biber has fully exploited the possibilities of Baroque Instrumentation in the Missa Alleluia: a chorus with 2 sopranos, 2 altos, 2 tenors and 2 bass voices grants him a large number of combinations of voices and thus constant change of timbre. The strings choir also has six parts, with both violins often conducted virtuosically. A chorus with 3 trumpets and 2 cornetti is even surpassed in tonal mass by the chorus composed of 2 clarini, 4 trumpets, and timpani. This large number of trumpets emphasizes the cheerful character of the work and is very luxurious by Austrian standards.

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev is one of the most widely performed of all living Russian composers. Each of his new compositions constitutes a milestone in contemporary musical history. His ability to imbue his music with profound religious content, to unite diverse cultures and styles, to invent new ways of musical expression while remaining faithful to the centuries-old classical tradition, and to utter most profound themes using a simple and comprehensible musical language, singles him out among present day composers. His most widely performed work, the St Matthew Passion (2006), has received worldwide recognition. Following its premiere in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in March 2007, it has been performed more than seventy times in different countries by the most distinguished soloists, choirs and orchestras. Invariably it receives standing ovations from audiences at each concert. This SACD features five works by Metropolitan Hilarion that were produced over a thirty year period and performed by the excellent Russian National Orchestra.

Gramophone Awards 2010 Best of Category - Baroque Vocal. "The Balthasar-Neumann Ensemble and Choir perform with full-blooded tension; Hengelbrock makes the fullest possible use of the plangent oboes and pulsating string chords but also ensures that the music-making never loses its focused precision…This is nothing short of revelatory."

In 17th and 18th century New England, transplanted Englishmen like Daniel Read, Abraham Wood, and especially William Billings were composing beautiful but rough-hewn and distinctly American vocal music for use in what were called "singing schools." Far to the west and south, in what was then called New Spain and would later be called Mexico, natives and transplanted Spaniards were composing liturgical music of a richness and complexity that was worthy of the greatest cathedrals of Europe – and teaching their native converts to do the same. This disc showcases the works of two of 18th century Mexico's finest composers: the Mexican-born Manuel de Zumaya and the transplanted European Ignacio de Jerusalem. The latter is represented by a polychoral Mass in D Minor, a responsory, and a gorgeous Dixit Dominus setting written in six sections; from the former listeners have a setting of Jeremiah's lamentations, a breathtakingly complex solfeggio composition titled Sol-fa de Pedro, and the polychoral Celebren, Publiquen.

To mark the 500th anniversary of the birth of Tallis, here are his biggest and best church compositions, performed in its customary high style by the Oxford Camerata under Jeremy Summerly (whose Fauré Requiem remains one of Naxos's all-time bestsellers). Tallis's youthful motet Salve intemerata is among the longest single-movement works of the 16th century, but it is Spem in alium, a work of Tallis's maturity, that overshadows any other English piece of the period, including those of his great contemporary, William Byrd. Scored for 40 independent voices, it is symphonic in proportion and resplendent in this surround-sound version.

Stephen Paulus was an astonishingly prolific fixture of the American music scene, with some 600 works to his credit. His sudden death in 2014 left classical music—particularly the worlds of opera and choral music—significantly the poorer, so it’s inevitable that we should see his legacy memorialised with new additions to the catalogue. Royal Holloway’s ‘Calm on the Listening Ear of Night’ sets Paulus’s music in dialogue with another Midwestern composer, René Clausen. It’s Clausen whose musical personality emerges most strongly here in these precise performances. His works offer a distinctively American spin on the fashionable Baltic sound world of Ešenvalds and Vasks that is as appealing as it is generous. In pace, which opens the disc, offers eight minutes of lushly filmic excess.

Les Noces is a screaming, shrieking, flat-out masterpiece. Leonard Bernstein himself has referred to it as Stravinsky's greatest work, and listening to this incendiary performance, it's awfully hard to disagree. Scored for voices, four pianos, and percussion, the work provided the inspiration for the entire career of Orff (of Carmina Burana fame), but it's so much better as sheer music than anything Orff wrote. And what a cast! The pianists for this performance include Martha Argerich, Krystian Zimerman, Cyprien Katsaris, and Homero Francesch, four certified virtuoso performers, while the singers of the English Bach Festival Chorus really cover themselves with glory in both works. A stunner.

As the old saying goes, "the third time's the charm." This is indeed the third time the German label Accent has issued this coupling of Domenico Scarlatti's Stabat Mater with João Rodrigues Esteves' Missa a oito voces. The first time was in 1990, when the recording by Currende under the leadership of Erik van Nevel was new, and the second in 1998 as part of a box set containing this and several recordings by Concerto Palatino. No complaints here, though, as this is one of the finest discs Accent has to offer.

Founded in 1906, Les Petits Chanteurs à la Croix des Bois (Little Singers of the Wooden Cross) are renowned as one of the world's most established children's choirs. Founded by Paul Berthier and Pierre Martin, two students on vacation at l'Abbeye de Tamie, the Paris-based traveling choir broke tradition with its lack of affiliation to a particular parish or cathedral. Directed by Father Fernand Maillet, they soon developed an international presence thanks to performances at the Vatican and an appearance in the 1945 film La Cage aux Rossignols, and continued to remain active throughout the 20th century, with singer/songwriter Matthieu Chédid, Les Prêtres' Charles Troesch, and Olympic rowing champion Adrien Hardy among some of their famous former members. By its centenary year, which was celebrated by a France2 show featuring duets with the likes of Tina Arena, Lara Fabian, and Nolwenn Leroy, the choir school had developed into a full-time educational institution, combining regular studies with a global touring schedule.

This release from the Latvian Radio Choir, conducted by Sigvards Kłava, features timeless choral works by three composers from Russia and Latvia: Yuri Falik, Artūrs Maskats and Georgy Sviridov. These 20th and 21st century choral works present the profound and sacred, which is to be found and enjoyed in many areas of our lives, from nature and the seasons to personal relationships and love. The Latvian Choir’s previous release on Ondine – Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil – was chosen as ‘Record of the Month’ for Gramophone Magazine and also received a nomination for ‘best choral disc’ in the 2013 Gramophone Awards. The Latvian Radio Choir is considered one of the best chamber choirs in Europe.

The Prague Philharmonic choir join over a dozen others who have recorded Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil, a work once thought the special property of the Russian choirs who are, of course, prominent in the lists. The Czechs sing it without a cantor, and more as a concert work than some of the others do. Though they take the famous scale in the Nunc dimittis, descending to a profound B flat, in their stride, they are not as sonorous as some others, and their particular contribution is to sing the music lightly and flexibly, with a lively response to the words. They have excellent sopranos, safe in intonation when attacking the exposed high entries in thirds which are a feature of the music, and a good tenor for the three numbers that involve him as a soloist. The Magnificat, with all its tempo changes and shifts of register, is expressively done, as are the light rhythms of ‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord’.

The intensely practical choral music of the young Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds is steadily gaining appreciation across the world. The works on this new album owe their genesis to commissions from the United States, England and northern Europe and encompass ethereal expressions of uniquely arctic phenomena (listen for wine glasses turned—and tuned—to wondrously simple but devastating effect within the choral texture), American ballads and several works in the ‘Anglican tradition’, the fruits of the composer’s recent residency at Trinity College Cambridge. Trinity College Choir Cambridge here returns the compliment, as it were, with superlative performances of these varied and engaging works, all recorded under the watchful eye of the composer and conductor Stephen Layton.

On their fifth ECM New Series album, Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Torunn Østrem Ossum present a reconstruction of a 13th century votive Mass to the Virgin Mary, based on manuscripts and fragments originating in an English Benedictine Abbey. As Nicky Losseff, the trio’s medieval music editor, explains in the liner notes, “complex polyphonic music was important to the monks who lived at the Abbey of St Mary's, Worcester. Polyphony gave life to the otherwise ‘plain’ song of the liturgy. At Worcester, an unusual number of single leaves and fragments have survived. Through them, we have been left more than 100 songs, in many different musical styles: polyphony to adorn the movements of the Mass; the freely-composed, intricately-interweaving voices of motets; the stricter, declamatory tones of the conductus. All in all, it testifies to a thriving musical community.“

The Motets of Willaert have a mysterious reputation as they were originally performed only in clandestine circles for a few initiates until Alfonso II d’Este had a collection published in 1559 (Musica Nova, Venice). Singer Pur are a world renowned a capella singing group with a large audience and following. They have won many international competitions, and have appeared on numerous TV shows. The ensemble is stylistically diverse performing music from the medieval right up to the avant-garde.