Fitting the Petite messe solennelle on to a single CD may seem an attractive idea though in this instance it will appeal only to those who find the piano's ''Preludio religioso'' to be something of a bore. It has been severely shortened, a cut that helps to bring the running time down to manageable limits. I suppose an insert that gives misleading details about such mundane things as CD cues and the date of the cover photograph of the composer (''c. 1870'', by which time Rossini was safely stowed in Paris's Pere-Lachaise Cemetery) can't be expected to go into things like cuts but one would think better of the product if it squared matters with would-be collectors.
The whole issue is riddled with pluses and minuses of various sorts, which is a pity when in some respects it is a fine, thoughtful and musicianly performance. The vocal group Combattimento were founded in 1984 by David Mason and David Roblou (here playing the first piano and harmonium respectively) and they give us the Messe with the specified 12 voices, with the soloists Christine Bunning, Joy Robinson, Mark Tucker, Gary Coward and Richard Wistreich drawn from within the choir. All this brings us close to the ideal forces Rossini had in mind, to which have been added some period instruments, including two mellow sounding Robert Wornum pianos dating from the 1840s. Rossini's taste for some English products (primarily, Cheddar cheese) might well have extended to these two mellifluous instruments.
Standards of solo and choral singing on the record are generally high. There is plenty of fervour but little loss of clarity or poise in line and texture and tempos (apart from a rather quick ''Et incarnatus'') are generally sensible. Unfortunately, some of the vocal lines have been randomly decorated. The brief sleeve-note claims that in the nineteenth century singers used methods that have died out in our time everywhere but in jazz and pop music. This is a very naive remark. Rossini, particularly the older Rossini, was known to dislike unauthorized ornamentation and he would have been horrified to hear his text modified midway through the rising sequence of minor thirds at the heart of his moving setting of the ''Crucifixus''. The Petite messe solennelle is a courtly, classical work considerably removed from the operatic style of its day and no more susceptible to this kind of musical tampering than Faure's Requiem or Poulenc's Litanies a la Vierge Noire.
In the end, the cutting, the erratic and uncalled for ornamentation, and one or two roughnesses in production, including at one point what sounds like a ghostly off-stage chorus, rule this version out of court, leaving the wonderful Eurodisc set under Sawallisch and the King's, Cambridge recording directed by Stephen Cleobury for EMI in control of the field, albeit at a necessarily higher cost.'