“The performances are guaranteed to refresh even the most jaded palate.” -Early Music Review
Magnificat was formed in 1991 by its conductor, Philip Cave, to explore the rich diversity of choral music from the last five centuries. The ensemble specializes in the restoration and performance of neglected choral masterpieces of the 16th and 17th centuries. Magnificat ranges from four to forty voices and performs a wide range of music, both a cappella and with its own orchestra of period instruments.
In association with Linn Records, Magnificat has undertaken many recording projects of music from ‘The Golden Age’. The first these comprises motets by Gesualdo, Guerrero, Josquin, Rebelo and Victoria together with Allegri’s Miserere and Palestrina’s Stabat mater. A highly acclaimed recording of Victoria’s Officium Defunctorum of 1605, named a 1997 Critics’ Choice by Gramophone Magazine and chosen by The Rough Guide as one of its ‘100 Essential Classical CDs’, was followed by a disc of music by the neglected Spanish master, Philippe Rogier, including the Missa Ego sum qui sum.
Magnificat’s recording of Thomas Tallis’ forty-part motet Spem in alium was hailed as “quite the best recording” by Gramophone Magazine. The disc was recently selected as the BBC Radio 3 recommended performance of Tallis’ Lamentations of Jeremiah. This disc also includes the four-part Mass and Latin motets. This was followed by a CD of Palestrina’s twenty-nine motets from the Song of Songs published under the title Canticum Canticorum, and a second CD of polychoral music by Philippe Rogier will be released in 2011.
In addition to its recordings for Linn Records, Magnificat has undertaken several other recording projects: sacred and secular by the English baroque master, Robert Ramsey; a reconstruction of the Coronation service of Queen Elizabeth I, which includes the first recording of works by Richard Alwood and William Mundy; a disc of Chant in Honour of Anglo-Saxon Saints and a best-selling double album of Gregorian Chant, containing many hymns, sequences, and antiphons for the Church’s year.
