Vox Luminis has teamed up with the Freiburger Barockorchester again, and together they celebrate music for Ascension Day. This topic inspired great composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, four of whose Ascension cantatas have been preserved. The festive and colourful Cantata BWV 128 was composed towards the end of Bach’s second year in Leipzig. The Ascension Oratorio BWV 11 was written for larger forces and ends with a triumphant chorus. In the case of Georg Philipp Telemann, more than thirty cantatas for Ascension Day alone have survived. The cantata Ich fahre auf zu meinem Vater (I ascend unto my Father) was composed in 1721 and receives its world premiere recording here. Lionel Meunier’s ensemble and the FBO give a fervent rendering of this captivating music with its texts focusing on the afterlife.

Johannes Brahms drew texts from various Biblical sources for his Deutsches Requiem . As we hear in his choral music, he had a passion for polyphony and was inspired by models from the great Lutheran tradition of the late Renaissance and the Baroque. Ricercar and Vox Luminis have explored this early repertoire with the same passion for many years now, although with no less admiration for Brahms's masterpiece.

This superb album commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation puts Martin Luther’s defiant act in musical context, celebrating some of his collaborators. Vox Luminis have made some excellent—and award-winning—albums, and this is one of their finest. Ambitious in scope, and imaginatively programmed, it finds the Belgian group with organist Bart Jacobs in top form. In addition to the obvious names, like Schütz, Praetorius, and Scheidt, we encounter some of the lesser-known composers of Luther’s time. This is not just historically important—it's also musically satisfying.