16 Apr 2025
"I’m pleased to report that this first recording with Jonathan Sells is brilliant" Gramophone
The Monteverdi Choir’s latest album on the award-winning Soli Deo Gloria label, Bruckner & Gesualdo: Motets, is released on 18 April 2025. Marking two landmark anniversaries—the Choir’s 60th and the 200th birthday of Anton Bruckner—this release captures the ensemble in live performance under conductor Jonathan Sells during their October 2024 concerts in Ely Cathedral, Oxford, and at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich.
A rich and thought-provoking set list, the album features what Jonathan Sells describes as “the kind of programme that someone in the 19th century could have put on.” It opens with what is believed to be the only currently available recording of Richard Wagner’s rare arrangement of Palestrina’s Stabat Mater, offering a unique historical lens on sacred music through the eyes of a visionary from the Romantic period. The album then juxtaposes the solemn spirituality of Bruckner’s revered a cappella motets with the intense chromatic fervour of sacred works by Carlo Gesualdo. At first glance, the two composers seem an unlikely match—“Bruckner, the pious constructor of monumental, proto-minimalist symphonies, and Gesualdo, famed for his murderous jealousy and twisted, intimate madrigals,” as Sells notes. Yet, when paired side by side, these deeply expressive compositions, though separated by centuries, reveal profound commonalities in their exploration of faith, suffering and transcendence.
This is the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestra’s first album release since before the pandemic, making it a particularly special milestone. Performed with the Choir’s renowned precision and expressive depth, Bruckner & Gesualdo: Motets stands as both a tribute and a renewal: honouring towering composers while inviting fresh reflections on our sacred choral tradition.
The album is available to purchase on CD and digital download, and listen to on all streaming platforms. With this compelling release, the Monteverdi Choir invites listeners on a journey through torment and radiance—an anniversary offering worthy of both composers’ legacies. Listen now.
