The Rheinische Kantorei under their new director Edzard Burchards presents a truly inspired, thoroughly spiritual album to absolve us from the hustle and bustle of our modern life with devotion and love. Using the venerable motet as its starting point, the ensemble tells the story of the cantors of St. Thomas, Leipzig. Over more than a century and a half, they strove to the best of their ability to fulfil this prestigious and demanding role.

The journey begins with Tobias Michael, who took up his post in 1631 in a ravaged land to give due praise to the Lord, right up to Johann Adam Hiller, the classical composer who took over the post in the year of the French Revolution. Alongside them are a number of musicians whose hopes—whether justified or not—were dashed. This includes Johann Ludwig Krebs, a pupil of the pre-eminent Johann Sebastian Bach, who produced the programme’s “Overture”: Jauchzet dem Herrn alle Welt, a pastiche in which some of the ideas of his friend Georg Philipp Telemann have been inserted. You wouldn’t know it – because Love & Devotion are the common threads that bind this world together in its very essence.