How many readers, I wonder, know any Italian chamber music of the nineteenth century? There is of course the Verdi String Quartet, and a few odds and ends of Rossini; but few are likely to have much of a context for these two remarkable and fascinating works. Mercadante in fact composed a good deal of instrumental music, among which these two ‘deciminos’ are evidently the most elaborate. The word, preferred to the more conventional ‘decet’, simply means a piece for ten instruments – each has flute, oboe, bassoon, string quartet and double-bass, to which the first adds trumpet and horn, the second piano and an extra viola. The nearest analogies are to be found in the chamber music of Hummel and Spohr, but Mercadante does not write like a German: these pieces are imbued with the spirit of Italian opera.
The opening movement of the First Decimino is restless, agitato music, full of big gestures, but with spacious lyrical elements too; it moves on to a graceful minuet with an aria-like trio, an Andante which begins like a deeply felt aria (for oboe, then flute; the trumpet later adds a hint of banality), and a leisurely finale full of lively instrumental dialogue. In the second, the presence of the piano, with its occasional excursions into virtuosity and its inherent special role in an ensemble, has an odd effect on the relationships between instruments, but the result is still attractive, and there is some spirited invention in the waltzy second movement and the finely architected Andante, beginning with an extended bassoon theme and incorporating some very delicate and pensive music later on – certainly one of the highlights of the disc. Another is the little piece at the end, the Poesia for four cellos, very tender and appealing music.
Mercadante certainly had a highly professional technique, a rich harmonic sense and fluent invention; those accustomed to more austere central European music may sometimes question his taste, but that’s their worry. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing and rehearing this CD, which is very sympathetically and affectionately performed, and I hope that many readers will lend it an ear.'