While the German tradition observes a strict distinction between sacred and secular styles, the 19th-century Italian Mass can feel more akin to attending an operatic performance. Donizetti’s church music, consisting of at least a hundred items, has hardly been explored. Individual movements were often later recycled by the composer, in cantata-like fashion, to form a complete Mass, and it is this ad hoc technique that Franz Hauk has used to create a new work, the Messa di Gloria and Credo in D. This includes an expansive Qui sedes with its violin solo written for the famous violinist-composer Pietro Rovelli, and is completed with movements by Johann Simon Mayr from whom Donizetti learned his compositional craft in settings of sacred texts.

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A native of Peru, Celso Garrido-Lecca is one of the foremost Ibero-American composers, successfully integrating a unique blend of musical elements that include serialism, the native sounds of the Andes, and the influence of the ‘Nueva Canción Chilena’ movement. Impressions of folk music capture celebrations of life and moments of drama in the Suite peruana and Danzas populares andinas, while Laudes II expresses praise through Chinese philosophy. The award-winning Retablos sinfónicos combines popular roots in both vocal music and dance forms driven by a cajón or wooden box-drum.

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Domenico Cimarosa was one of the last great exponents of the ‘Neapolitan School’ and one of the most famous and successful composers before the arrival of Rossini on the European opera scene. His works were produced and re-staged at innumerable performances in opera houses all over Europe. This programme represents the extraordinary range of Cimarosa’s career, from Le trame deluse (The Foiled Schemes) and La villana riconosciuta (The Country Girl Revealed), which were among his greatest hits, to overtures from cantatas such as Atene edificata (The Founding of Athens) and the ‘dramatic composition’ for Cardinal de Bernis, written on the occasion of the birth of the Dauphin, the firstborn son of Louis XVI.

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Invented in Paris in 1846 by the Belgian-born Adolphe Sax, the saxophone was readily embraced by French composers who championed the new instrument through numerous ensemble and solo compositions. This tradition is celebrated in a programme, performed by the young and exciting Kenari Quartet, that explores the saxophone in all of its colors and sonorities, from Pierre Max Dubois’s light-hearted and jazz-inspired music to the lyrical and expressive world of Alfred Desenclos, and from Jean Françaix’s witty ‘bantering’ to the excitement and energy which closes Florent Schmitt’s Quatour, Op. 102.

This is the fifth and final volume of Carpe Diem’s highly acclaimed cycle of Taneyev’s nine complete string quartets which are notable not only for the composer’s famed meticulous craftsmanship but for their attractive lyrical sweep. Infused with the spirit of Haydn and Mozart, the harmonically adventurous Eighth Quartet includes a beautiful and romantic Adagio. The Second String Quintet is a monumental work in every sense, standing firmly alongside the later quartets.

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