Performer: Martha McLorinan

Though musically flawed, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s choral work The Atonement is given a superb performance at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford Cathedral. 

Well defined performances of Monteverdi madrigals are sung with I Fagiolini’s customary ease and involvement. 

Enhanced by bells, Ex Cathedra Jeffrey Skidmore give a low-key but highly dramatic performance of Rachmaninov’s Vespers in Birmingham Town Hall

Adrian Partington and the Philharmonia give an impersonal, soporific rendition of Elgar's The Apostles at Gloucester Cathedral. 

Bradley Smith, as Evangelist, and a fine cast of soloists drove this Good Friday account of Bach’s St Matthew Passion from Ex Cathedra in Birmingham.

An exquisite evening of British 20th-century choral music from Tenebrae under Nigel Short at the Sydney Festival, with outstanding renditions of the music of Parry, Bingham and Stanford.