The Cardinall’s Musick: Mystics

A beautiful programme which sets 16th-century polyphony alongside contemporary minimalism. The mystical minimalists John Tavener and Arvo Pärt are as immersed in their religious feelings as William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons yet they come from very different traditions. Byrd’s dark-toned Mass for four voices inspired by Catholic devotion is set against Gibbons’s more suave and energetic Anglican writing.

Tavener and Arvo Pärt instead look to the Orthodox traditions of the East. These contemporary writers use a direct and powerful approach, ikon-like in its seeming simplicity but immensely powerful.

‘Truly extraordinary.’ (New York Times)