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Streaming: a fond farewell from the Hilliards and Jan Garbarek

• Who would have guessed that a British male-voice quartet and a Norwegian saxophonist would form a lasting union. It’s now 25 years since the Hilliard Ensemble and Jan Garbarek joined forces at the suggestion of ECM’s founder-impresario, Manfred Eicher, to release Officium, one of the cult label’s bestsellers. Garbarek and the Hilliards gave their farewell concerts together in 2014. Remember me, my dear (ECM) is the fruit of that last tour.

The wide-ranging programme follows their established recipe of early, contemporary and improvised music, recorded to achieve heightened resonance, embellished with Garbarek’s poetic soprano sax, at times jaunty, at others possessing the imperative cry of a shofar. The ebullient rhythms of Pérotin’s Alleluia Nativitas, and its segue into Hildegard of Bingen’s O ignis Spiritus, then Garbarek’s We are the Stars makes a typically compelling sequence. The title song – anonymous Scottish 16th century – is a heartfelt finale. Not for purists, but offering its own singular and hard-won purity.

Andrew Nethsingha, director of music at St John’s College, Cambridge since 2007, has helped give an already distinguished - and distinct, in its richly expressive sound - collegiate choir new profile with several themed albums. The latest, Magnificat (Signum Classics), features English settings of the two evening canticles – the Magnificat (“My soul doth magnify the Lord”) and Nunc dimittis (“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace”) – by Charles Villiers Stanford, Kenneth Leighton, Herbert Sumsion, Herbert Howells, Gabriel Jackson and Michael Tippett.

The music forms a web of connections: Stanford taught Howells, who had a spell as organist at St John’s but whose heart was in his native city, Gloucester, where he was friends with his fellow organist-composer Herbert Sumsion. Nethsingha explains all in his interesting liner note. The Tippett, opening with an arresting organ fanfare (organist Glen Dempsey), sounds the most inventive and brilliant, while the Howells and Jackson, like the rest of the disc beautifully sung, capture a wintry mood of dusk and meditation.

• In his three-part A Singer’s World, the German baritone Benjamin Appl shares his passion for lieder, as performer and listener. Concludes tonight on Radio 3, 11pm/ BBC Sounds.