De Abendmusiken waren een legendarische concertreeks georganiseerd door Buxtehude in Lübeck. Johann Sebastian Bach legde een lange weg af om deze concerten van sacrale en instrumentale muziek bij te wonen en ontmoette er de meester Dietrich Buxtehude, de beroemdste organist van Europa. Ter gelegenheid van de 500e verjaardag van de Lutherse Reformatie presenteren Vox Luminis en het Ensemble Masques een programma van cantates en instrumentale stukken. De opname brengt specialisten in het vak samen: experte stemmen van Vox Luminis in combinatie met de vitaliteit van de instrumentalisten van Ensemble Masques.

“This is music of expressive variety and flexibility, ideally suited to the skills of Vox Luminis…They do not disappoint, charting the emotional contours of Buxtehude’s music with exquisite understanding and demonstrating their now familiar deep but lucid choral blend, out of which expertly executed solos emerge and return.”

—Gramophone
 
 

“Rich, lively and truthful, the recorded sound consummates a seductively considered disc that pretty much never puts a foot wrong. Hanseatic heaven!”

—BBC Magazine
 
 

“Only first-rate musicians whose supreme gift is the ability to listen – to listen to each other and to the composer” “This is a fine, atmospheric CD and would serve as a splendid introduction to anyone who thinks of Buxtehude simply as the father or the North German school of organists. There is a wealth of choral music there, which many people hardly know and these are alpha class performances .”

—Early Music Review