Music in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, including five newly-commissioned pieces from the Merton Choirbook. A new work by Judith Weir heads a set of the four Marian antiphons, all specially commissioned from women composers; while two further première recordings represent the work of regular Merton collaborators Gabriel Jackson and Matthew Martin.

At the other end of the chronological spectrum, Peter Phillips' expert direction of Byrd's rarely performed 'Salve Regina', a bold statement of Catholic faith from Reformation England, and of John Nesbett's late fifteenth-century 'Magnificat' completes this portrait in sound of a woman who—as characterised in Alexandra Coghlan's illuminating booklet essay—is at once virgin and mother, human and God-bearer, suppliant and Queen of Heaven.

Click on the links below to hear snippets from The Marian Collection:

Ave Regina caelorum, Judith Weir (born 1954)
Mother of God, here I stand, John Tavener (1944-2013)
Magnificat, John Nesbett (died 1488)