"Sheer joy in music-making is as evident here as the sense of piety required by what are, after all, holy works. Yet it is difficult to begrudge Vox Luminis the feeling of joy at the astonishing sounds they are able to produce. The spirit of devotion is very much alive here too, in an album that pays equal attention to the holy and the heady."

Winner of a Diapason d'Or and a Choc du Monde la Musique. The greatest recording of the organ works of Buxtehude by specialist Bernard Foccroulle, who uses five historic and modern instruments to shed a new light on the richness and variety of this repertory.

The movement to record Renaissance music in ways that illustrate its context has mostly bypassed Orlande de Lassus up to now. This is partly because his vast output is hard to get a grip on. Lassus was arguably music's first international star, and he was capable of bringing to his employers (mostly the Duke of Bavaria, already something of a cultural crossroads in the late sixteenth century) music from all around the continent.

Samuel Scheidt was one of the most interesting Lutheran composers of the early 17th century. Like his famous contemporary Heinrich Schütz, he combined the polyphonic tradition with the new styles from Italy. His Cantiones Sacrae for eight voices mark the summit of Renaissance musical style; even though Protestant chorales are integrated into the work, Scheidt does not hesitate to use expressive effects that originated in the Italian madrigal style.

The opening of Venice’s first opera house, the Teatro di San Cassiano, in 1637, was one of the major events in the history of opera. The protagonists of these new operas henceforth represented all the social categories making up this public and who, in fact, had to be able to find themselves onstage. The gods were no longer the only ones to lay down the law, challenged by the Vices and Virtues who preached in the Prologues.