This 2004 survey of modern settings of the medieval sequence Stabat Mater Dolorosa is part of conductor Marcello Viotti's project to record the little-known but worthy sacred works of the twentieth century, in conjunction with the Munich Radio Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Chorus for their concert series Paradisi gloria. The four works by Francis Poulenc, Karol Szymanowski, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Wolfgang Rihm are dramatically different in conception and musical content, and may be regarded more as reflections of personal faith than as practical works for ecclesiastical purposes.

Eu tive essa honra de tocar com a maioria dos meus ídolos… E eu comecei cedo, cara. Na verdade, com 17 anos eu já estava gravando aquele disco do Ivan Lins, "Daquilo que eu sei". E mais do que isso, eu fiz a turnê do "Novo Tempo”. O baixista que gravou foi o Alex Malheiros, mas ele já estava em pleno voo com Azymuth, e aí pintou o teste pro @Ivan Lins. O Luizão falou: olha, Ivan tá trocando de baixista, vai lá fazer um teste. E eu disse: então me empresta seu baixo aí!”

Here's a Symphony of Psalms that successfully captures the spirit and letter of the work–reverence, jubilation, and celebration, as well as specifics of orchestral color and texture. Boys' voices–supposedly Stravinsky's original choice–contribute their share to the bright choral timbre, an effect that works very well. We also get first-rate performances of the Mass and the rarely recorded Canticum sacrum.

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.

Presenting the original motion picture score to the acclaimed 1985 dramatic thriller RUNAWAY TRAIN, starring Jon Voight, Eric Roberts and Rebecca De Mornay and directed by Andrei Konchalovsky and based on a screenplay by Akira Kurosawa. Composer Trevor Jones (THE DARK CYRSTAL, EXCALIBUR, CLIFFHANGER) effectively enhances this story of escaped convicts on a runaway locomotive with a unique brew of electronic sounds and rhythms. Remastered from MGM vault elements, this special Limited Edition release produced by Ford Thaxton presents the original album version of the score, as well as the premiere release of the film score itself, which includes the previously unreleased film version of “Gloria in D Major – Et in Terra Pax”, from the movie’s finale.

Gothic Voices, the world-famous early music ensemble, makes its Linn debut with a recording celebrating the biblical matriarch Mary. Pieces from contemporary composers Joanne Metcalf and Andrew Smith sit alongside settings of Marian texts from the 13th and 14th centuries. Notably, there is a rare setting of English biblical text which precedes the first publication of an English language bible by 150 years. Mary in her various guises - caring mother, virgin lover, guiding light - are explored through settings of ancient ritualistic texts showing her mythical and human aspects, whilst contemporary settings relate the themes to the modern day. The contemporary works are cleverly constructed around a modal core so that they fit perfectly with the structure and sound of the early music compositions. With over thirty years experience Gothic Voices' complete understanding of every aspect of early music performance is exceptional.

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."

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.

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.

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.

A welcome return to Hyperion for Ex Cathedra and Jeffrey Skidmore, whose exuberant recordings of Baroque music from around the world have made them one of the best-loved ensembles of today. These magnificent liturgical settings from the heart of the Venetian polychoral tradition are full of drama, wonder and extraordinary spatial effects. His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts and Concerto Palatino provide the sonic gilding that would have been an essential part of the original performances, when extra musicians crowded the galleries of St Mark’s for special occasions.

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.

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.

Never performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra before, and rarely heard in concert at all, the Requiem by Antonín Dvorák captured on this CD from a live concert seems a near-forgotten masterpiece. Dvorák scholar Gervase Hughes cites this work for four soloists, chorus and orchestra as one of the composer's finest sacred creations, 'a deeply moving expression of faith on the part of a composer whose religious conviction never wavered'. It's a conviction stamped through the composer's illuminating, fervent score.

Two of Bach’s finest cantatas, both for solo alto, composed in Weimar (1714) and Leipzig (1726) respectively, are here coupled with the delicious agony of grief that is Pergolesi’s 'Stabat mater', an acknowledged masterpiece by one of the 18th century’s most influential composers. Bach so admired the composition of his Neapolitan colleague that he made his own ‘parody’ of it to a German text. On this recording, La Nuova Musica, in its 10th anniversary year, and its two eminent soloists display equal mastery of both idioms.