Haydn: Missa Cellensis

This recording inaugurates a collaboration between René Jacobs, the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the Zurich Sing-Akademie and Alpha Classics that will produce a total of four albums between 2025 and 2028. The first will include the Missa Cellensis, followed by three albums dedicated to Haydn's last six masses. Haydn was commissioned in 1766 to write a Missa Solemnis, a fully orchestrated mass with trumpets and timpani; it is the third and largest of Haydn's fourteen masses. The Missa Cellensis was known by its misleading name from 1766 until 1975, when a fragment of the autograph score with the title page, Kyrie I and Christe was found in Bucharest, revealing that Haydn had in fact composed two Missæ Cellenses. It is the first of these two (1766) that has been recorded here. René Jacobs brings all his expertise and enthusiasm to the service of this music he loves so much, in collaboration with soloists with whom he works regularly, an orchestra that is also a long-standing partner, and the remarkable choir of the Sing-Akademie Zürich.