Born near Ingolstadt, halfway between Munich and Nuremberg, Simon Mayr (1763-1845) was largely active in Italy, setting up a music school in Bergamo, where Donizetti was among his first (and most devoted) pupils. Remembered now far less than many of his followers, he was a leading figure in serious opera as it developed at the start of the new century, exerting an influence on Rossini and the bel canto composers. In addition, he also wrote, according to Grove, 18 Masses, seven Requiems and literally hundreds of single movements for insertion into sacred services of all sorts.

The Messa di Gloria appears to have been a favoured form in northern Italy, setting the Kyrie, often in three discrete parts, and the outer sections of the Gloria. This is what is presented here, with the remainder of the Gloria of a pair of Masses in E minor and F minor drawn from Mayr’s (purportedly) 277 individual Mass movements. The hour-long E minor Mass demonstrates both Mayr’s operatic leanings and his roots in the 18th century. The ‘Christe’, for example, is a mellifluous tenor aria with obbligato cello, while the ‘Domine Deus’ is a bass aria with a virtuoso solo horn part; on the other hand, the second ‘Kyrie’ contains a fugue making play of the same falling diminished-seventh motif familiar from plenty of music by Bach, Handel, Mozart and others.

The F minor Mass dispatches its text in a third of the time, its relative briskness not precluding equally distinctive touches of orchestral and harmonic colour. Tenor Markus Schäfer is rock-solid in a series of arias, while soprano Dorota Szczepańska eats up the coloratura in the E minor’s ‘Qui tollis’. Franz Hauk’s burning advocacy for Mayr is palpable and his forces respond with enthusiasm, if at the expense on occasion of finesse. For all Mayr’s avowed allegiance to the sacred works of Haydn and Mozart, if you prefer your church music to smell more of greasepaint than of incense, this could be an ideal place to start.