Gijs Leenaars - Verdi: Quattro Pezzi Sacri (2022) [Hi-Res]

Giuseppe Verdi was never a strictly God-fearing man. Nevertheless, he composed great sacred works during his lifetime. These include his "Messa da Requiem" from 1868, and in the last third of his life, his increasing return to his church music beginnings was reflected in a series of smaller religious works. Among them are especially "Quattro Pezzi Sacri," published as a cycle in 1897, only four years before Verdi's death. With this late work composed for soprano, chorus and orchestra with soloist Gesine Nowakowski, the multiple, including three-time Grammy Award-winning Rundfunkchor Berlin and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin open their joint tribute to Verdi the church musician, which will be released on Sony Classical on March 18

Under the baton of chief conductor Gijs Leenaars, choral works by Rossini, Puccini, Wolf-Ferrari and the premiere recording of Bossi's "A Raffaello divino" will also be heard

Verdi was particularly proud of the "Quattro Pezzi Sacri". And he considered the concluding "Te Deum," which is one of his last great compositions, to be one of his most perfect works ever. Verdi's second sacred composition on this new recording is the "Pater noster" for mixed choir a cappella, which was premiered in 1880 not in a church but at La Scala in Milan as part of a charity event. The setting of the Corpus Christi hymn "O salutaris hostia" is one of the few sacred works by Gioacchino Rossini, a composer whom Verdi always admired. Thus the genesis of his "Requiem" goes back to a communal composition in memory of Rossini. Conversely, Giacomo Puccini was to pay tribute to his great colleague Verdi with a short deeply moving "Requiem", which he wrote on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of Verdi's death

The recording with Italian choral music also from the pen of Verdi contemporaries is rounded off by two repertoire rarities. They are Marco Enrico Bossi's (1861 - 1925) "A Raffaello Divino", written on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the death of the painter Raphael, and Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's (1876-1948) "Eight Choruses" op. 2, from which two canti are included on this album. And as an unknown author once stated, these choral songs testify to Wolf-Ferrari's "great love(s) for Italian Renaissance music and may at the same time be counted among the most beautiful that flowed from the pen of the young composer."