This strange disc features non-operatic music by Saverio Mercadante, best known (if at all) as an opera composer. It includes a mass for two tenors, baritone, and male choir, a solo for tenor and male choir, a work for two organs, and two solo organ works. The organ parts for all but one piece (the Grande Sinfonia) replace the instruments Mercadante actually composed for. The results are odd–and frankly, so are the works. The Mass makes the text absolutely clear–there’s little counterpoint or harmonic invention. Solo and tutti parts alternate. The “Kyrie” is very simple, while the opening of the “Gloria” is playful, leading to a nice operatic melody. The “Qui tollis” begins calmly and solemnly and has a mid-section that’s much like one of those frozen-in-time, bel canto ensembles. For the organ, there’s little other than a quiet underpinning accompaniment until the start of the “Credo”, where it noodles around cutely. There’s no fugal writing anywhere, and the mass ends after the “Credo”.
The Tantum ergo is a fine, strophic piece for tenor with choral interjections, which could be an operatic call-to-arms. The organ piece on themes from Rossini’s Stabat Mater is entertaining only for how the “Cujus animam” keeps returning, and the Sinfonia caratteristica for two organs is colorful and contains some nice Spanish dances. The performances of these unimportant works are duller than dirt, with the solo organ pieces being played with almost no expression and some of the tenor singing simply awful. Other than as a curiosity, I can’t figure out why anyone would want to listen to this: Mercadante was a fine opera composer, and if he wrote other impressive music, it’s either not on this CD or not discernible the way it’s performed here.
