Sever Lawes Baroque Players St. Albans Cathedral Girls Choir Winpenny - Missa Sancti Nicolai - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Compared with large-scale oratorios such as St Paul, which includes the lyrical chorus How lovely are the messengers, Mendelssohn's smaller sacred choral works were influenced by Palestrina, ranging from short liturgical motets such as the Sechs Spreche to the canticle settings of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis. The famous sacred melody 'O for the wings of a dove' is to be found in Hear my prayer. The fine choristers of St Albans Cathedral can also be heard 'on sparkling form' (Gramophone) in John Rutter's Gloria (8.572563). Tom Winpenny is Assistant Master of the Music at St Albans Cathedral, where he accompanies the daily choral services and directs the Abbey Girls Choir. Previously, as Sub-Organist at St Paul's Cathedral, London, he performed with the Cathedral Choir at the AGO National Convention, with the London Symphony Orchestra in Mahler's Symphony No. 8, and played for great state occasions.

Lantlos capture 'The Unfathomable Lightness of Being' like hardly any other band that started out under the influence of black metal at what now feels like a million years earlier. On their sixth studio album, InchNowhere in Between ForeverInch, mastermind and sole musician Markus Skye (formerly known as Markus Siegenhort aka Herbst) takes the general direction of it's predecessor InchWildhundInch (InchWild DogInch) at least one step further. InchNowhere in Between ForeverInch offers a spiritual trip into the glittering world of the Nineties, when everything seemed somehow easy and possible. The album offers a collection of hit songs that are rooted in the current Lantlos sound, to which it adds elements from the digital sonic sphere that started to expand drastically during the final decade of the last millennium. On the other hand, it would be doing this album massive injustice to view it as pure nostalgia. As Skye notes, there is a hollow plastic feeling that is deliberately built into InchNowhere in Between ForeverInch and subtly casts a foreboding shadow of darker times to come. These musical plot-twists connect the easy-going, seemingly sunny and even poppy alternative rock and metal tracks to the black past of Lantlos. With InchNowhere in Between ForeverInch, Lantlos confirm both the stylistic trajectory taken with the last two albums and their remarkable ability to create captivating tunes and beautiful melodies with a nearly frightening ease. Trigger warning InchNowhere in Between ForeverInch contains only beautiful killers and no fillers!

Although he remains best known for his symphonies, Anton Bruckner's output of sacred choral works is sizable and represents the essence of a composer whose Catholicism was both profound and almost entirely unwavering. These works include various motets and anthems of which some of the most popular are featured on this recording including Ave Maria, Locus iste and Os Justi. Thanks to the excellent acoustics of the 11th century St Albans Cathedral, this recording sounds wonderful, particularly in the immersive spatial audio with Dolby Atmos version (which is available to stream via Apple Music). The recording features boy choristers rather than the more commonly heard women's voices, fitting closer to Bruckner's intentions. St. Albans Cathedral Choir is regarded as one of the finest cathedral choirs in the country and this is the first time they have recorded these works. This recording is released ready for Bruckner's 200th birth anniversary in 2024.