Saturday 5th April 2025
Spring concert at St Michaels and All Angels, Bedford Park W4
Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle
Having finished writing his many operas thirty years previously, Rossini came out of a comfortable retirement to write this delightful and original work, which he self-deprecatingly referred to as his ‘poor little mass’ – one of his ‘sins of old age‘, as he called his later works.
Despite that, the work was well received, with a contemporary reviewer writing that, ‘The same facility of invention, melodic abundance, nobility of style, the same elegance, and novel twists, richness of harmony, audacity and happy choice of modulation, the same vigour of conception and of expression, the same ease of part-writing and disposition of the voices, and the same masterful and authoritative skill in the overall scheme of the work, as well as in the structure of each movement ..’
