Tonight’s event marks a notable anniversary for Trinity Boys Choir: their 50th season of giving concerts. In celebration, the choir has invited other European ensembles with whom it has close ties to share the stage.

The first programme, by Trinity Boys Choir, presents a Lady Mass by the English renaissance composer Nicholas Ludford, his Missa Domenica, and some striking mediaeval songs.

In the second programme, the award-winning German a cappella male voice quartet Quartonal performs works by British composers of the Romantic era, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs and Alec Rowley. Contemporary music acts as a common thread between the programmes and there are two world premieres by Graham Lack.

The manuscript of the Ludford mass bears the arms of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and the composer himself produced it perhaps as a gift to the royal couple. The setting is unique in its scoring for three high voices, evincing a notable grace and fluency for early 16th-century polyphony. Some 13th-century carols, like Angelus ad virginem, add spice to the first half. As for the second, the ‘sea-cycle’ Full Tide by Alec Rowley may be less extolled, but is a remarkable invocation of 19th-century port life and full of harmonic vigour.