The composer writes: My inspiration for O Virgo Prudentissima (2019) lies in the sacred choral music of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and other Russian composers. With ponderous tempi and rich harmonic progressions, the choral music of these masters is both sonorously thrilling and profoundly moving – and I hope that those characteristics have found their way into my music.

The text I chose for this hymn to the Virgin is by Agnolo Ambrogini (known as “Poliziano”). This fifteenth-century Florentine scholar and poet was patronized by the Medici family, and served as a tutor of the future Pope Leo X.