Stradella: Mottetti album review – flair and style, brilliantly executed

Born in Bologna in either 1639 or 1643 (sources conflict), Alessandro Stradella packed so much incident into his colourful, short life that it’s hard to imagine how he found the time to compose more than 300 works – including oratorios, cantatas and six operas. He had already survived one assassination attempt in Turin before his multiple affairs finally caught up with him in Genoa, where he died at the age of 38 (or 42), possibly murdered by the brothers of a woman he had seduced.

In his lifetime, Stradella was much admired; he was credited with inventing the form of the concerto grosso, and Handel borrowed from his works in his Israel in Egypt. But now his music is little known, and much of it remains unrecorded: only one of the five motets that Rinaldo Alessandrini and his Concerto Italiano singers and instrumentalists include in their selection has appeared previously on disc.

The motets, for one, three or five voices, come from a collection of 17 contained in manuscripts held in archives in Modena, though when most of them were composed and for what occasions remains unknown. The two solo works, Exultate in deo fideles, for bass, and Sistite sidera, coeli motus otiamini, for soprano, are showpieces of almost operatic brilliance and intensity, sung with fabulous clarity and precision by Gabriele Lombardi and Sonia Tedla. The motets that begin and end the sequence, In tribulationibus, in angustiis, and Convocamini, congregami, are on a different scale altogether, with alternating arias, recitatives and ritornellos. As Alessandrini suggests in his sleeve notes, they seem intended for performance in a theatre rather than as part of a liturgy. These vocal numbers are interspersed with a couple of Stradella’s string symphonias, performed with just as much flair and stylishness as everything else on this brilliantly executed disc.

Stream it on Apple Music (above) or on Spotify