This recording from the SWR Vokalensemble under chief conductor Yuval Weinberg brings together three Mass settings for double choir, united by a shared tradition yet spanning more than a century of composition. Josef Rheinberger's Cantus Missae (1878), written during his time as court chapel master to King Ludwig II, balances a warm, almost song-like lyricism with a harmonic subtlety that still feels strikingly modern. Nana Forte's Libera me, composed nearly 150 years later, treats the double-choir format as a vehicle for spiritual drama, setting the choirs against and around each other in vivid contrapuntal exchanges. Frank Martin kept his Mass for Double Choir private for almost forty years, regarding it as a deeply personal statement; its sound world fuses echoes of Gregorian chant with a distinctly twentieth-century harmonic language. Together the three works trace a fascinating arc from Romantic serenity to modern spiritual searching, performed with the SWR Vokalensemble's renowned precision and expressive depth.