Quoniam Ensemble & Bruno Gini - Cavalli: Missa pro Defunctis, Mottetti e Sonate (2012)

For a well-to-do Italian family of the seventeenth century, the name of Pietro Francesco Cavalli would have been well known. He was one of the premier operatic composers of the early Baroque, but his operas were complex spectacles that have proved daunting for the mostly low-budget ensembles of the early music movement. Nevertheless, they are slowly being revived to great acclaim. This disc, among the strongest in a recent series of early music releases on the Italian label Tactus, now reawakens a wonderful sacred work by Cavalli, the Missa pro Defunctis or Requiem mass. Like Cavalli's operas, the mass requires quite a varied set of forces. This disc brings together no fewer than four separate ensembles: the Coro "C. Monteverdi" di Crema, the Renaissance wind ensemble Quoniam, the oddly named viol consort Dià.Pason, and the Cantori Gregoriani chant singers. Cavalli sets six sections of the requiem mass polyphonically, and this performance intersperses appropriate chants among those, adding instrumental sonatas as well. There are also three solo motets at the end of the disc. Unlike other Baroque religious works, this one is not in the least operatic. The fully set sections have chant-like single lines, full choruses accompanied by both the winds and the viols, and groups of soloists: this performance presents a female soprano (Yetzabel Fernadez), a male alto (Roberto Quintarelli), a "sopranista" (as Italians apparently like to call a high countertenor, here Florin Cezar Ouatu), and a bass (Gianluca Buratto). The centerpiece of the mass is the 15-minute Dies Irae, nicely described in the liner notes as being cast in an outstanding mosaic of small, distinct motets. The music is both kaleidoscopic (the individual subsections are often just a minute or two long) and sometimes sinuously dark, an extremely compelling combination, and the Day of Judgment text opens with a rapid torrent of words. This was a late work for Cavalli, and one that he asked to have played at his own funeral. Conductor Roberto Gini molds all of his diverse forces together into a well-balanced large performing group, and Cavalli's work itself takes its place among the parade of great Requiem masses in the European tradition. The only complaints are minor ones. There is nothing wrong with breaking up a mass of this type with instrumental music, but the pieces chosen here don't fit well with the mass itself. And the English translation of the Italian liner notes is substandard. In all, this is a recording that can be recommended far beyond the sphere of early music. The mass could easily be performed by a large civic choir with modern orchestral instruments. Presenters hoping to bring together several performing groups from the same city, say, should hear this music, for it offers the chance to get to know a little-known masterpiece. The disc was recorded in the Italian city of Lodi, in a Cistercian abbey that provided the ideal sonic ambiance for this project.