Memorial Beach is the fifth album by the Norwegian band A-ha, released in 1993. The album was recorded primarily at Prince's Paisley Park studios outside Minneapolis in the U.S. Memorial Beach featured three UK Top 50 singles for the band, "Move to Memphis" (released as a single in 1991, almost two years before the album), "Dark is the Night" and "Angel in the Snow". While the album did not chart on the U.S. Billboard 200 and would be the band's last to be released there, the single "Dark Is the Night" peaked at #11 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart, their last U.S. charting to date. Q magazine listed the album as one of the 50 best albums of 1993: "If ever a band deserved reappraisal on the back of an album then it was a-ha!"

If there is one Mendelssohn symphonic recording that makes the case for a more favorable reassessment [of the composer], it's this pairing of the Italian Symphony and some of the Midsummer Night's Dream music by Sir Charles Mackerras…. The clarity of texture here [in the Symphony] is extraordinary, even when the brass and winds add their clout. As a result, every line of Mendelssohn's orchestration comes through clearly, leaving a listener with a renewed respect for this composer's inventiveness…. The Midsummer Night's Dream music is even more miraculous….

The present recording constitutes more than just a new version of the Vespers. It is the first recording of the Vespers in the alternative version proposed by the composer, without concertato instruments. It reveals the underlying matrix of the work we all know, the ‘original version’ to which Monteverdi added concertato instruments for use in large-scale performances. Respecting the structure of the Office of Vespers, Ludus Modalis has chosen to frame the psalms with the antiphons corresponding to a Marian ceremony.