Music by Vivaldi’s Venetian contemporary Antonio Lotti is still rarely found on disc. Lotti was a successful composer of operas, but was also prolific in other spheres of vocal music, notably those of the Mass, oratorio and secular cantata. The principal work on this new disc is a Requiem Mass in F major which conductor Thomas Hengelbrock considers the most important Requiem before Mozart’s. The piece is certainly a very fine one, full of expressive contrast and rendered the more fascinating by Lotti’s affection for a quasi-Palestrina style on the one hand and his skill in deploying more up-to-date techniques on the other. This Requiem is essentially in the late baroque idiom, occasionally recalling certain of Vivaldi’s larger sacred vocal pieces. The sections differ from the sequence usually encountered in later eighteenth-century Requiem Masses. There is neither Sanctus, ‘Benedictus’ nor Agnus Dei, but instead a very extended ‘Dies irae’ as well as a much shorter ‘Requiem aeternam’, Kyrie and Offertory. Whether the work was written for Venice, where Lotti was for many years maestro di cappella at St Mark’s Basilica, or for Dresden, where he stayed for a couple of years between 1717 and 1719, is uncertain. Full of theatrical gestures, supple polyphony, warmly seductive harmony and some beautiful melodies, the Requiem held my attention from start to finish. The contrasts are often striking, as between the hushed opening section – with some up-to-date harmonic progressions and wonderfully fluid vocal homophony – and the awesome introduction to the ‘Dies irae’ with its judgmental muted trumpets, declamatory fervour and menacing rhythms.
The a cappella Miserere is well known and in this performance is sung with clarity and finesse. The five-movement Credo is a supple piece for choir and strings with some affecting, shimmering harmonies in the ‘Crucifixus’. As well as full Mass settings, Lotti, like Vivaldi, seems also to have favoured separate autonomous sections such as this, themselves subdivided into short units. Performances are splendid, bringing some expressively highly-charged music to life with flair and panache. A very rewarding issue. Strongly recommended.'