Sacred & Profane

This mid-priced reissue celebrates the 2013 centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth, offering a superb sampler of the composer's delightful choral music performed by Stephen Layton and his award-winning choir Polyphony. Featured on this Gramophone Award-winning recording is one of the last choral works Britten was to complete - Sacred and Profane - a collection of eight medieval lyrics for voices in five parts. Also included is the Chorale after an old French Carol based on texts by W H Auden (a close friend of Britten's). The work was meant to be part of a Christmas Oratorio on which Britten and Auden intended to collaborate. The seven settings of poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins entitled A.M.D.G. were never performed in the composer's lifetime and indeed had to wait until 1984 for their first performance.