Philips & Dering: Motets

One of the UK’s leading collegiate choirs, The Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, and its Precentor Matthew Martin make their debut on Linn. This new recording offers a fresh insight into the lives and works of two expatriate English Catholic composers exiled to Flanders at the time of the Reformation. Peter Philips and Richard Dering both travelled widely in Europe and their music displays a variety of religious and musical influences picked up along the way. The texts speak with a directness and intensity, deeply affected by this period of religious and artistic turbulence. As a celebrated choral composer in his own right, Matthew demonstrates a masterful grasp of these works, many of which receive their first recording here. The unique combination of instruments from the period instrument ensemble In Echo also serve to add intensity and colour to this most sophisticated music of the Late Renaissance.