Lionel Meunier’s assured direction never misses (nor overstates) an expressive trick; and Vox Luminis’s warmly inflected singing is throughout finely-attuned to the way in which every note has its exact place in sustaining the whole. A superb anthology, superbly executed

This year has seen several fine recordings celebrating the quincentenary of the founding act of the Reformation but this is comfortably the most searching and artistically rewarding that I’ve listened to.....The music is of consistently high quality, the selections by ‘minor’ figures frequently as telling as those by acknowledged masters...Programmatic flair is backed up by performances and a sound recording to match.

In short, this is a winner all round, and deserves to be taken up by historians and music lovers alike.

Nothing surpasses the solemn beauty of Schütz’s German Magnificat, but Thomas Selle’s Die mit Tränen säen (later set by Brahms) is piercingly beautiful. Intensely focused singing from Vox Luminis, and fine organ interludes by Bart Jacobs.