It is astonishing that we should have two recordings within the course of a year of a hitherto little-known and rarely performed early setting by the teenage Rossini of the ‘short’ Mass (settings, that is, of the first three movements of the Ordinary of the Roman Catholic Mass). Not that the two recordings are in all respects similar. Studio SM’s enterprising but slightly ramshackle and over-ambitiously titled three-CD set is called “Rossini: the complete unpublished sacred music”. As part of the first CD it includes what it calls: “Kyrie (1808)”, “Credo (1808)”, and “Gloria di Ravenna (1808)”. The music of these three movements is the same as that which we now have in Philips’s recording of the so-called Messa di Milano. It is merely the ordering that is different, and the name.
The autograph manuscripts of the various movements are lodged in the Gustavo Adolfo Noseda collection in the Milan conservatory, on different papers, oddly numbered. Given the fragmented nature of the autograph and the complete absence of any information to date about when and where the music was first performed (Messa di Milano refers simply to the location of the manuscripts), it is little wonder that different sections should have been so variously extracted and rearranged.
Where Rossini is concerned, however, Philips are a label with impeccable credentials, thanks to Erik Smith’s years of careful stewardship and the close ties he established at the outset with the editors of the Rossini Critical Edition. The new edition of the Messa di Milano is the work of the scholar Jurgen Selk and a formidable array of scholarly backers: Philip Gossett, Patricia Brauner and Gabriele Dotto, all names well known to Rossinians.
As for the Philips performance, it is a joy from start to finish, distinguished by that special mix of grace, dash and superfine sensibility that has long been so distinctive a feature of Sir Neville Marriner’s conducting of this kind of music. Give him a work to conduct with the bloom of youth on it – one thinks of his wonderful old Argo recording of Bizet’s Symphony in C (12/73 – nla) – and he is in his element still. The singers, too, appear to treasure every note. How Rossini would have beamed to hear these youthful pleasantries so treated!
As for the Messa di Milano itself, though it cannot aspire to the contrapuntal and harmonic richness of Rossini’s unofficial mentor here, Joseph Haydn, there is enormous pleasure to be derived from the music’s youthful zest and melodic fertility. The Christe eleison and the Crucifixus are both especially alluring.
Almost as astonishing as the sudden duplication on record of the Messa de Milano is the appearance within 12 months of the hitherto rarely recorded (and never previously adequately recorded) orchestral version of the Petite messe solennelle. Matchless as the original scoring of the Messe is for two pianos and harmonium, dedicated Rossinians will probably want the 1867 orchestration as well. And in most cases choice will probably come down to simple practicalities: Chailly on two mid-price CDs offering the Petite messe solennelle alone, or Marriner on two full-price CDs nicely juxtaposing the boy Rossini and the mature master with two very different works.
In practice, though, the two performances of the orchestrated Petite messe solennelle are quite distinct. For example, Marriner and his organist John Birch seem more mindful of the texturing of the original score and the special colour that is shed there by piano and harmonium. Chailly’s organist is unambiguously himself, a wonderful pillar in the tuttis, but a less interesting player than Birch in the “Preludio religioso”. On the other hand, Chailly’s Bologna forces – his splendidly articulate choir and his fine array of soloists – bring a darker, warmer colour to the music, more Bellini than Sullivan.
Chailly’s soprano and mezzo, Daniella Dessi and Gloria Scalchi, are glorious, individually – as in the Crucifixus, the “O salutaris”, and Scalchi’s moving account of the concluding Agnus Dei – and as a duo in the Qui tollis where they are rather better matched than Focile and Mentzer on the Marriner. Marriner has the more stylish tenor, Chailly the blacker bass.
The more forward placing of the choir on the Decca recording does not blot out the discreet touching in of Rossini’s often rather quaint wind and string descants. Marriner’s performance is rather more hit and miss here, with the last furlong of the Cum sancto spiritu tending to sound a bit like the tag-end of a Savation Army rally.
In the end, my own preference, where the orchestrated Petite messe solennelle is concerned, would be for the Chailly, not because of any manifest failings in the Marriner –though it is not as eloquently sung as the Chailly – but because the Chailly performance does have a really quite extraordinary beauty and intensity about it. Marriner’s coupling, though, may sway you the other way.'