Ensemble Amarcord is one of the most acclaimed male vocal ensembles performing today and this Christmas release shows why. Impeccable blend and enticing arrangements makes this a recording that will be a favorite every holiday season. It combines 15 Amarcord classics, taking you from Finland to Nigeria, from Trinidad & Tobago to Poland - sometimes jazzy, sometimes reflective and moving, but always guided by the longing for coming home for Christmas.

Listen to Il Est Ne Le Divin Enfant in RealAudio.

This CD begins with the performance of the penitential psalm 'Gott, sei mir gnadig nach deiner Gute (anon)'. This astonishing work has never before been recorded on CD. The only known date which survives in a manuscript score is 1711. Amacord, one of the world's leading vocal ensembles performs works by Schutz, Schein and Praetorius. Capella Sagittariana Dresden also performs on some tracks.

With its tenth recording Ensemble Amarcord takes a stroll through the musical Leipzig of the nineteenth century. Simultaneously, this anniversary release is a reverence to the hometown of the five world-class vocalists. They obviously feel very much at home in this repertoire, and the listener is accorded many a musical discovery in Restless Love. Besides widely known songs from which they elicit new nuances by means of their just as fresh as knowledgeable creative will, eight of the titles appear for the first time on this CD, including a piece for male choir by Mendelssohn! The Weihgesang (Consecration Song) for Goethe's funeral service was rediscovered by the Leipzig Mendelssohn researcher Ralf Wehner. Yet, besides the music of the then Gewandhaus music director Felix Mendelssohn and his friend Robert Schumann, it is exactly the today hardly known composers that make this CD so remarkable. This is music by Adolf Eduard Marschner, a relative of the crazy, brilliant Heinrich Marschner, who was also active in Leipzig or the musical jewels by Carl Steinacker, August Muhling, and Carl Friedrich Zollner, whose works have long been forgotten by the history of musical reception. Unjustly, for the songs of love and pain that amaracord has bundled together in Restless Love are without exception musical treasures.

'Hear the Voices' is not just the line of a prayer appearing several times on this CD, but also an appeal to the listeners - to listen between the lines, to hear the centuries between the lives of the various composers, between them and us, to hear the links between their styles of composition, the subtle nuances with which certain words are interpreted by sounds. This all calls for more careful attention than simple 'listening'. The musical journey starts in France, before taking us back half a millennium to the Flemish region with Luther as our guide. Then there's a little detour to the Iberian Peninsula, a trip to the British Isles, before we finally return to amarcord's native skies in present-day Germany.

Former choristers from Bach's own church make up this German version of The King's Singers. This contemporary a cappella program ranges from Billy Joel to Supertramp to a Cuban love song, and a superb cover of Sinead O'Connor's 'In This Heart'. These are great male choral interpretations of popular songs that are sure to delight.

'INCESSAMENT' - hidden behind this mysterious title is an exciting CD program at whose center stands the world premiere recording of the Missa Incessament by Pierre de la Rue (c. 1452-1518). Gregorian chant from the Moosburg Gradual supplements the Mass. Two of de la Rue's compositions with close connections to the Mass frame the program: the French chanson Incessament, on which the Missa Incessament is based, and its incarnation as a Latin motet - Sic deus dilexit - for Protestant Germany. The program was planned in collaboration with J. Evan Kreider, the leading de la Rue researcher, and Gregorian-chant expert Godehard Joppich. This CD was recorded in the marvelous basilica of the Benedictine Monastery at Wechselburg, Saxony, providing the music with an appropriate atmosphere.

After three extremely successful CDs with vocal music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, amarcord turns this time to the wonderful French vocal music of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The exquisite singers from Leipzig once again demonstrate their amazing versatility. Starting in the second half of the 19th century, amarcord present some less well-known facets of the works of Rossini and Saint-Saens. Meanwhile the 1920s with their pioneering spirit are represented by compositions by Cras, Milhaud, and the young Poulenc, whose entire works for male voices recorded here stretch into the post-war period. But one thing that all the items in this album have in common is their deep rootedness in France and the French: in for instance tradition, dialects, dances, incidents, feelings and savoir vivre. In a nutshell, this album is 'tres francais'!

Listen to Clic, clac, dansez sabots in RealAudio.

Christmas has been celebrated for many centuries in all corners of the world, and this tradition has brought forth what are probably some of the most beautiful and enduring folk songs. The present CD is as diverse as the cultures. It goes from the well-known 'Es ist ein Ros entspungen' by way of Sicily ('O sanctissima') to Trinidad, and from Gregorian chant through the Renaissance to a Christmas motet by Thomaskantor Erhard Mauersberger (1903-1982). 'In adventu Domini' contains Advent and Christmas pieces from a period of over a half a millennium, including real gems that are gems not just because they are not to be found on any other Christmas CD. And of course the Leipzig vocal ensemble Amarcord once again arouses enthusiasm with its incomparable sound.

A musical journey to sixteenth-century Europe with secular vocal music of the Renaissance! The vocal ensemble amarcord brilliantly interprets the music of this epoch in its newest production 'The Book of Madrigals' (RK ap 10106). With this CD, the young ensemble presents Renaissance music and madrigals by European composers such as John Dowland, Thomas Morley, Ludwig Senfl, Adriano Banchieri, Orlando de Lasso, and Josquin des Prez. Cipriano de Rore's 'Anchor che col partire' - one of the most popular madrigals of its time, and in arrangements and adaptations still an 'evergreen' over a century later - is also masterfully sung here. With the release of 'The Book of Madrigals,' amarcord has added another impressive CD to its discography.

'Nun komm der Heiden Heiland', containing Early and Renaissance Christmas music, won a CASA award in 2006 for 'Best classical album' and is a most rewarding of the award. The tale told by the booklet stretches back to St. Augustine and his role in early Christian church music, all by way of explaining the origins of Nun komm der Heiden Heiland (Now come, savior of the Gentiles), the hymn that gives the album its title. It got started as a Latin hymn, Veni redemptor gentium, by Saint Ambrose, the bishop of Milan who baptized Augustine of Hippo; translated into German and simplified somewhat by Martin Luther, it became a pan-Protestant hit. The group's singing is intonationally dazzling and splendidly controlled, fully the equal of any of the world's more flamboyant male vocal ensembles but without drawing attention to itself.