Rossini: Petite messe solennelle (2CD)

Rossini's "little big" late work The "Petite Messe solennelle" under Antonio Pappano It is one of the most beautiful, but also one of the most underrated gems of sacred music: Rossini's "Petite Messe solennelle". Spiritual seriousness is combined here with a wealth of melodic richness. In keeping with typical Italian traditions, Rossini set the text of the Catholic liturgy to music with many stylistic borrowings from the tonal language of opera. In the new Roman recording, Rossini's rarely heard late work comes to sonorous life: Antonio Pappano conducts the orchestra and chorus of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia; Marina Rebeka, Sara Mingardo, Francesco Meli and Alex Esposito make up the perfectly harmonized vocal quartet Incidentally, that this is supposed to be a "little mass" is a typical Rossini understatement. When he lived in Paris, withdrawn from opera, he nevertheless could not give up composing and wrote all kinds of works for various instrumentations, which he jokingly apostrophized as "sins of old age" - and yet there are true masterpieces among them. Rossini wrote the Mass, which lasts almost 90 minutes, in 1863 at the age of 71. The first performance took place with only twelve singers and piano and harmonium accompaniment at the dedication of a count's private chapel. Four years later, the composer completed a version with large orchestral accompaniment. It was not until after Rossini's death that this version was premiered, and it is now considered the opera master's last great work. Like his model Mozart, who left behind an unfinished Requiem, Rossini thus also occupied himself with sacred music at the end of his life.