Born in Venice, Antonio Caldara (1670-1736) spent the last 20 years of his life in Vienna, where he was vice-kapellmeister to the imperial court. He composed a huge amount of music there – more than 60 dramatic works, and an equal amount of liturgical music, including his contributions to the series of oratorios that were performed each year during Lent. Morte e Sepoltura di Christo dates from 1724, and is in some ways a fusion of the Italianate baroque oratorio with the German passion. It has no Evangelist-style narrator, but instead a quasi-operatic series of solo recitatives and arias – many of them with instrumental obbligatos – for the protagonists in the passion story, along with a chorus to close each of the two parts. Fabio Biondi interpolates other music into this sequence – motets and instrumental sonatas by Caldara himself, sinfonias by Johann Joseph Fux and Vivaldi – though the rationale for this isn’t made clear. Biondi has reportedly been working on baroque repertoire with the Stavanger Symphony for 10 years now. Musically, the performance here feels stylish enough, but the singing sometimes seems dutiful rather than engaged; there’s nothing that shouts out that this is a rediscovered masterpiece.
