Hot on the heels of their glorious recording of Handel’s Ode for St Cecilia, Carolyn Sampson and James Gilchrist are here joined by a host of further soloists for this third volume of Monteverdi’s sacred music.

The programme opens with the ebullient second setting of the Dixit Dominus and ends with the seven-voice Gloria, surely one of Monteverdi’s most impressive sacred works and one which is thought to have been part of a ceremonial Mass written to mark to the end of the 1630 plague outbreak in Venice. In between these two pillars of the repertoire come nine motets and Psalms, including the famous Christe, adoramus whose long-breathed phrases become the perfect vehicle to show off the intense range of colours Robert King so effortlessly draws out from his performers.