Sacred Choral Music: Ferguson / Edinburgh St Mary's Cathedral Cho

Following Gramophone Editor's Choices for their recent excursions into the sacred music of Bruckner and of Gabriel Jackson, Duncan Ferguson and the Choir of St. Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh return, in their fourth disc together, to the epoch of their first recorded triumph - the early sixteenth century. Their 2010 Taverner disc won plaudits for it's exhilarating freshness and panache, and the choir brings the same musical and liturgical integrity to music by Taverner's near contemporary John Sheppard, Informator Choristarum at Magdalen College, Oxford (where Ferguson himself was a more recent organ scholar). This wide-ranging collection is centered around Sheppard's most extended and ecstatic composition, the Missa Cantate.