Lotti - Crucifixus

The Guardian 60

The Syred Consort, Orchestra of St Paul’s/Palmer
(Delphian)

The plangent dissonances of Antonio Lotti’s setting of the Crucifixus are well known to choral singers: here the scholar Ben Byram-Wigfield has put it back in a complete mass setting, which turns out to be a curious concoction partly by Lotti (1667-1740) and partly, adapting his music, possibly by his pupil Jan Dismas Zelenka. Both here and in another G minor Credo, Lotti’s music is strongly profiled, solidly baroque, with an especially expressive fugue at the end of the Gloria, then re-used in the Benedictus. There are a good number of first recordings here, driven well by Ben Palmer, though the soloists are not all equal to Lotti’s extravagant demands.