If you’ve never heard anything like this before, try Lost Voices of the Hagia Sophia; the CD is generous, and well-produced with sound musical premises. It is highly likely to make you at least think seriously about searching out similar music.

a magnificent production. The singing of Cappella Romana is superb from start to finish – the choir comprises 14 voices but often they make a huge sound, albeit without any suggestion of forcing the tone. The demonstration-class recorded sound enhances their performances greatly. I can honestly say I’ve never experienced a disc like this but it’s a real ear-opener and a formidable achievement

This is the Byzantine chant album that aficionados have been waiting for and will be of interest far beyond the true believers… perhaps the most spectacular recording ever of Byzantine chant, and one of the most remarkable surround sound recordings I have heard.

This new Cappella Romana offering should be a welcome addition for collectors who, like me, thrill to lossless audio, especially when it's of such evocative music with such a stunning sonic "backdrop". This is a stellar release all around, and Cappella Romana: Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia comes Highly recommended

As if 96 gorgeous minutes of the Akáthistos Hymn were not value for money, the album is rounded off with a shimmering performance of O Tebe Raduetsya, Moody’s 1990 setting of another hymn to the Virgin, this time from the Russian Orthodox tradition

The tone is wonderfully varied and evocative, especially the rich drone of the Orthodox chant. The women’s voices are pure but warm. The unnamed solo cantors are fluent and secure. Any lover of late-medieval music should find this an absolute delight. Add Lingas’s erudite notes, the sizable bibliography, the authoritative editions, and the superb engineering, and this release becomes indispensable

The singing is impressive and the liturgical character of the chants selected for this disc comes off convincingly.

Saturate yourself in either for about an hour and then switch for another hour, and you’ll swear they are the most disparate genres ever. … Cappella Romana is at its sterling best

Their unanimity of attack and fastidious approach to dynamic contrasts are just two hallmarks of an outstanding achievement. Hats off, too, to Preston Smith and Steve Barnett for their superb engineering and production. …the finest advocacy from these fine musicians. This is definitely a disc to savour

One of the big choral rediscoveries of recent years combined with a stunning performance and recording, Steinberg’s sublime and eloquently moving Passion Week is a work to which I’ve returned again and again this year

Passion Week is a profoundly moving composition… This is a unique and beautiful recording, one that deserves to be discovered and loved by many.

The disc, the ensemble’s 20th, was recorded in Stanford University’s Memorial Church, a space of subtle resonance that allows the music to float on a halo of sound without ever becoming hazy. The singers of Cappella Romana…sustain the long phrases with remarkable finesse and breath control, including those intrepid basses, who appear to possess endless reserves of air.

an eloquent brilliance, singing with tremendous relish, as though this obscure masterpiece had been in their repertory for years …the finest advocacy from these fine musicians. This is definitely a disc to savour

Maximilian Steinberg’s Passion Week is a major work which deserves to be better known. … Alexander Lingas and Capella Romana are to be congratulated on their scholarship in recovering the work, and their fine recording

Alexander Lingas, in collaboration with Ioannis Arvanitis, is fortunate in being able to reify his archival researches into Medieval Byzantine chant by means of Cappella Romana's fine musical skills and their recording team

The power of this stunning performance is that it simultaneously brings to life a masterpiece in whose sounds you can bathe with eternal opulence, and also restores a liturgical and spiritual monument that deserves a permanent place and wide use in its intended context and beyond

‘Passion Week’…is on a scale with the great sacred works of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, though in a slightly more advanced idiom, and is quite simply beautiful.

an austere, inexorable, mesmerising Crucifixion liturgy told in the 8th-and-9th-century Byzantine chant that once resounded within Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre, leading the listener through Christ's final earthly journey

Recommended, with something of a lost treasure of Russian choral music

it is hard not feel that the work this group is doing is not only presenting music that has a veneer of inaccessibility in a way that releases its particular beauty but also allowing it to bloom and continue to evolve