This world premiere recording reveals a new masterwork by the 18-century Italian master Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, brilliantly reconstructed by musicologist Malcom Bruno from the composer's single-movement woks. Most of this music has been lost or forgotten since its creation more the 250 years ago, and most, if not all, has never been recorded.

The Adoration is the latest release by the Warsaw Philharmonic, performed by the Warsaw Philharmonic Choir conducted by Bartosz Michałowski. This album is devoted entirely to the music of Paweł Łukaszewski – one of the most outstanding contemporary Polish composers – and comprises selected works of sacred music for a cappella choir written between 2006 and 2018.

Antonio Florio et son équipe de la Cappella de'Turchini nous ont habitués à de passionnantes découvertes dans le répertoire de leur ville de Naples, au passé musical si riche et pourtant délaissé par la plupart des musiciens.

Cantatas for an evening's music. Buxtehude's major contribution to mid-baroque German sacred music lay in the Abendmusiken, the evening concerts organized before Christmas by the organist of Lübeck outside the context of his official duties. While most contemporary cantors had to produce a cantata a week, Buxtehude placed his genius in the service of works of the highest artistic demands. Here are some of the most dazzling examples.

David Pohle (1624-1695) was born in Marienberg in the Erzgebirge. He came from a family of miners and town pipers. Little is known about his life. After studying with Heinrich Schütz, who was later the godfather of his son, he was an instrumentalist, Music Director and composer at various princely courts in northern Germany. Despite holding mostly leading positions and although he produced an extensive oeuvre which provides interesting insight into the origins of the Protestent church cantata, none of his works were published during his lifetime - certainly an important reason why today Pohle's music is known only by insiders and specialists.

Interesting recording of the famous Stabat Mater by Pergolesi performed by the Accademia Bizantina, under the direction of Ottavio Dantone. The program is complemented by the very little-known and interesting Salve Regina by Porpora. It is a version with original instruments and notable historical criteria. It is worth highlighting the good role of the solo voices.

Verses in praise of music for St Cecilia's Day were fashionable in the seventeenth century but in poetic inspiration none equalled Dryden's two poems in which he attempts to imitate the effects of music in language. He wrote this one, his Song for St Cecilia's Day, in 1687; it was set to music during the poet's lifetime but not, of course, by Handel whose setting dates from 1739… The highlight of Handel's score for me is, without question, his hauntingly beautiful setting of Dryden's second stanza, ''What Passion cannot Musick raise and quell!''. Here, especially, Handel matches a text which Dr Johnson regarded as exhibiting the highest flights of fancy with a tenderly expressive cello obbligato.

C.P.E. Bach eclipsed his legendary father s fame to become the mid-18th century s leading German composer. This wide-ranging collection of symphonies, concertos and vocal works by the great forerunner of Haydn and Mozart is performed by authoritative interpreters including Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert. The evident delight of the musicians in this music makes for rewarding listening … Impressive and fascinating.

For a long time Johannes Ockeghem (ca.1420-1497) was one of the most famous Unknown Persons in music history. There is no doubt about his position as the most important representative of the second generation of Franco-Flemish composers.

In November 1984 Sir Colin Davis conducted a performance of Messiah in Munich which, says the booklet which comes with these records, ''was a revelation to public and performers alike''. The surprising fact is that Messiah was previously almost unknown there. Enthusiasm was such that a recording was quickly organized with the same soloists. At rehearsal Sir Colin told the chorus to forget the B minor Mass; ''this is the world of Italian opera'', and as a result many of the choruses ''dance with a vitality born of freshness and discovery''.

The Brook Street Band join forces with the Choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford, and their director Owen Rees, for the first ever pairing on disc of the two settings of the Dixit Dominus by Alessandro Scarlatti and George Frideric Handel.

The Brabant Ensemble continue their investigation into unknown jewels of the Low Countries Renaissance, researched by their director Stephen Rice and recorded with equal amounts of passion and erudition by the young singers of the group.

Most of Monteverdi's motets for one voice were among his late publications, like the celebrated Selva morale e spirituale (Venice, 1640). An aboluste master of what he called the seconda prattica, he demonstrated in these pieces all of the skill he had acquired over the years in writing for the solo voice. Just as he had taken the madrigal to its peak of perfection, Monteverdi here realises the achievements of the Baroque period in this form of religious music inherited from the early centuries of polyphonic writing. The performers have striven to revive the typically Venetian context of the time, placing these sublime works in a framework of instrumental toccatas and sinfonias by his contemporaries Marini, Merulo and Antegnati.

A pupil of his uncle Don Angelo Durante, head of the S Onofrio Conservatory in Naples, Francesco Durante established himself as a leading composer of church music, after a period of further study in Rome. He served as primo maestro at the Neapolitan Conservatori Poveri di Gesù Cristo, where his pupils included Pergolesi, later moving to the same position at the S Maria di Loreto Conservatory and finally at S Onofrio. His later pupils included Piccinni.
Durante’s fame as a composer rested on his achievements in the field of church music. His works include Masses, motets, antiphons, canticles, psalms and litanies.

Jean Mouton was a Renaissance French composer and choirmaster, much acknowledged but more rarely recorded, who wrote a body of music that’s both technically inventive and immediately appealing. Here Stephen Rice and The Brabant Ensemble—renowned exponents of sixteenth-century Franco-Flemish repertoire—perform all Mouton’s eight-part music, two four-part motets, and his only five-part Mass setting, the Missa Tu es Petrus. The latter is characterized by light, clear textures and a soaring cantus firmus, while the double-choir Nesciens mater is rightly famous for its ingenious canon. Sheer compositional skill aside, all these works demonstrate Mouton’s vivid and original imagination—one that has the ability to speak directly to our time.