Sacred music features prominently in Wolfgang Rihm’s massive output, though his outlook is hardly doctrinaire – whether in such imposing works as Deus Passus after St Luke (Hänssler Classic, 8/01) and Requiem-Strophen (Neos, 1/19), or in the intimate sequence of motets Sieben Passions-Texte.

Written during 2001-06 for the sextet Singer Pur, this derives from the Tenebrae Responsories to which many composers have turned over several centuries. Rihm draws on the expressive chromaticism of Renaissance madrigalists, not least for their emotional heightening of salient words and phrases, yet his approach remains distinctive in its restrained harmonic eloquence and gently undulating polyphony. Performable separately or in smaller groupings, the motets evince a trajectory such as is only made explicit near the close of ‘Aestimatus sum’.

Interspersed between them, the five motets by Giaches de Wert are a reminder of the Flemish-born composer’s importance in bridging the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras – their formal clarity allied to an expressive freedom such as (presumably) satisfied official doctrine yet enabled an inherently personal response to emerge. Suffice to add that the constant interplay between these two composers makes their stylistic differences seem more apparent than real.

Not the least reason for this is the expertise of Cappella Amsterdam and unforced direction of Daniel Reuss in realising music distant in time yet unified in intent, heard in the translucent ambience of the Pieterskerk in Utrecht. The attractions of such a recording are no less evident in conveying, as Reuss himself notes, an ‘astonishing beauty and powerful magnetism’.