“The booklet includes Lingas’s excellent, lengthy background essay on Kassianí, her reception and the historical context of medieval Byzantine chant, along with the original Greek texts and translations.

Recognised among the pre-eminent interpreters of Eastern Orthodox chant, Cappella Romana are ideally suited to the task, combining deep familiarity with the tradition and advances in scholarship relating to historic performance practice (involving, for example, the use of drones, ornamentation and rhythmic articulation and countervailing distortions resulting from the Western lens of Gregorian chant).

What makes this album so remarkable, in addition to its focus on the first extant music known to be by a female composer, is the genuinely transportive effect of the a cappella singing, which varies among male, female and mixed-choir settings for the 15-voice ensemble and is captured on surround-sound SACD. Sung with such focus, balance and clarity, Kassianí’s time-defying flow of melodies imparts serene glimpses into eternity.”