Federico Maria Sardelli is a Baroque composer for our time. His ‘old-new’ music is grounded in extensive research and study of the music of Antonio Vivaldi, which ideally places him to recreate such music in his own image. However, this is not neo-Baroque music; it is Baroque music of the present, which in the composer’s own words ‘regains its own original language and adheres to its own original criteria, expressing vibrant new ideas that are in keeping with its identity’.
Following the successful release of his concertos and chamber music (Brilliant Classics 94749), Sardelli returns here with his sacred music for voices and orchestra. Together with settings of the Kyrie and Credo is his Dixit Dominus – a brilliant realisation of the diverse text of Psalm 109, brought to life through a lively mix of choral and solo singing. Here his engaging style breathes new life into a text popular with the Baroque masters; indeed, Sardelli’s flexible musical language and imaginative text illustration brings a fresh, spontaneous sound to this music of which Vivaldi would surely have been proud. His Church Concertos also bear a strongly Vivaldian imprint: the C major concerto contains melody that bears the stamp of the galant style, and the D minor concerto makes increasing use of the contrapuntal writing which peaked towards the end of Vivaldi’s life.