The 250th anniversary of the remarkably long-lived Bolognese composer Giacomo Antonio Perti (1661-1756) passed without much attention, but his music deserves better: Perti was highly respected as a teacher, an esteemed opera composer, and spent 60 years as maestro di cappella of S Petronio in his native Bologna. This programme of four substantial sacred works was put together last year by a group of Bolognese musicians aiming to restore the reputation of their city’s forgotten great composer. The Messa a cinque is first-rate music, including finely crafted solo movements, masterly orchestral writing and excellent contrapuntal choruses. “Laudate pueri” features a superb solo contribution from Gloria Banditelli, and Perti’s compact setting of Dixit Dominus does not suffer badly from comparison with Handel’s famous version. The short Magnificat is crammed full of excellent choral writing. The performances are generally decent albeit a little too pedestrian, with good continuo contributions and reasonably assured soloists (the women are more convincing than the men). Color Temporis Choir is a bit unrefined and Tactus’s sound recording is occasionally rough around the edges but there is plenty here to suggest that more renowned international early music groups ought to follow Paolo Faldi’s example by getting their teeth into Perti’s surviving works.

Pergolesi’s Salve regina hardly needs rescuing from obscurity but another Tactus disc devoted to Neapolitan sacred music from the 1700s presents a welcome opportunity to hear an intimately scaled performance, set alongside choral Miserere settings by Leo and Jommelli. Jommelli’s G minor setting for five-part choir and continuo is an impressive piece hitherto unknown to me, but Leo’s setting has been recorded in good performances before (notably by Ensemble William Byrd on Naïve). In comparison, Gruppo Vocale Cantemus sound woolly, and the throatiness of its members seems unwieldy, but it is good to be reminded of music that Wagner admired when he heard it at Naples in 1880.