They’re back, thank goodness; I’ve been missing the Monteverdi Choir of late. This is their first release on SDG since the pandemic and it feels like a long gap considering their previous appetite for releasing new albums. More importantly, I’m pleased to report that this first recording with Jonathan Sells is brilliant. Good news all round.

Marking both the Monteverdi Choir’s 60th birthday and the 200th anniversary of Bruckner’s birth, Bruckner’s exquisite motets are intertwined with works by Gesualdo – not two names I would put together readily, but both benefit from the union and remind us that this is a choir that sings music from Renaissance to Romantic equally well. And it’s an intriguing programme, invoking themes of choral revivals and historical concerts in the 19th century. The Cecilian movement also looms large over this disc, but I wonder if allegiance to the stile antico ever sounded so graceful and so fluent in the 19th century. Opening with Palestrina’s Stabat mater in Wagner’s edition is also a timely nod to the 500th-anniversary year for the ‘Prince of Music’. Wagner’s score was prepared for an 1848 historical concert in Dresden, and I find it fascinating: it is loaded with dynamic markings to the point of clutter, but in this (debut?) recording I note with delight how the Monteverdi Choir keep a sense of momentum that belies the sheer volume of expressive instructions that confront them. Bogged down they are not. The solo choir are particularly fine and perform Wagner’s more quirky moments with relish, such as the emphatic separation of ‘Mater unigeniti’. I’m pleased that this much-discussed historical document is now captured in sound, and in this case it’s all the more powerful and communicative for being a live recording.

Embedded also among the Bruckner and Gesualdo alternation is Lotti’s famous Crucifixus with its glorious chains of suspensions. Whereas Gesualdo’s motets can come across as normalised, perhaps due to the larger size of the choir, Lotti’s music is, as Sells writes, ‘a nod to the Classical influence which resonates through much of Bruckner’s music’, and as such is a shining central moment in this programme.

I’m less excited about the Gesualdo-in-large-format, well handled though it is. There’s a little trademark weirdness here and there in the first motet, Illumina faciem tuam, but overall it comes across as quite straightforward, the harmonic twists on ‘misericordia’ and the bass entry on ‘non confundar’ ideally needing a more obvious touch of madrigalian quick-wittedness. Perhaps the sheer commitment of O vos omnes best captures the power of Gesualdo’s text fragmentation and certainly the powerful homophonic passages, performed here with an undeniable thrust, make a bold statement. More than ever these motets performed by a large choir invoke the sense of a 19th-century historical concert that binds this programme.

The real standout stars of this album, though, are Bruckner’s motets. Masterpieces that they are, the Monteverdi Choir sing them with a ravishing blend of precision and warmth such that the Ave Maria and Os justi, in particular, must be among the finest accounts we have on record. Hardened Bruckner fans will be interested to hear Vexilla regis in its 1892 form. My only note of surprise is that by the end of the programme Gesualdo feels somewhat upstaged.