Jan Janca’s music reflects his personal experience. Showing remarkable wisdom he succeeds in combining music for practical liturgical use with the highest artistic aspirations.

The Missa de Angelis, composed in 1979 and including congregational song, impressively demonstrates this fact. Janca’s works lend themselves to performance – by no means the rule for contemporary composers... plus they are very popular – not only in Catholic parish communities.

Janca is now over eighty years old and traces his roots to Gdansk. During the 1950s he resided in the West in order to study with Marcel Dupré. Ruben Sturm, the Regensburg Cathedral organist, plays the Rieger-Organ at Janca’s “home church” of St Johannes Tübingen, and the Opus Vocale Choir of Berlin interprets the Missa with vigorous participation by the Karl Foster Choir in the role of the “congregation.” Volker Hedtfeld conducts the performance, with support from Heiko Holtmeier on the organ.