Ach Jesus stirbt

"Yes, I know we are coming up to Advent and Christmas, so this disc is a little out of season, but when the music and its performance under Lionel Meunier is so good, it deserves to be listened to during any season of the year. This is a wonderful disc of music, which on this evidence justifies its description as "undoubtedly the most unjustly neglected composer of seventeenth-century Lutheran Germany", and a must for all devotees of baroque vocal music".

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"Andreas Hammerschmidt (1611-1675), born in Bohemia but spent much of his adulthood in Freiberg and Zittau, was a renowned organist and a prolific composer of sacred music. This interesting new release from Vox Luminis and Lionel Meunier includes a well-chosen selection from his output ... Overall, another winning performance by Vox Luminis and Lionel Meunier, well recorded and presented too".

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"None of the music is claimed as receiving its first recording, but very few of the pieces face any competition ... Even if there were as wealth of rival recordings, it's hard to imagine the music receiving finer performances than here from Vox Luminis and their director Lionel Meunier".

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"Recording of the month - Editor's choice: Compared with the famous triumvirate of his contemporaries, Schütz, Schein and Scheidt (or even Michael Praetorius), Andreas Hammerschmidt (1611.1675) is an unheralded figure ... but here unquestionably he gets in at the front door. Highly praised in his lifetime as an organist ... this programme draws on a wide range of music, from pieces for solo singers or vocal ensemble ... to polychoral ones with independent instrumental parts ... Altogether, this is the standout among the albums I have received in a year, where such experiences have seemed more necessary than ever".