Giuseppe Gazzaniga (1743-1818) is remembered, in so far as he is at all, as the composer of the Don Giovanni whose text provided the model for Mozart's. He was an operatic composer, primarily, for the first part of his career; but when he was approaching 50 he took a post as maestro di cappella in Crema and thereafter wrote few operas, devoting himself largely to church music. The Gloria here was in fact composed early in his career, and I cannot find much to say on its behalf; the invention is often banal and the harmonic and rhythmic writing shows little imagination. The most appealing movement is the ''Laudamus te'', an alto solo with some attractive writing for solo violin. The Stabat mater, a later work, is quite another matter. It is not really distinguished music, but the elegiac tone of the verse is surely and often very effectively caught-in the first chorus, in C minor, faintly reminiscent of the opening scene of Gluck's Orfeo (but with a touch of the sentimental you would expect from the 1790s), and in several of the arias, which include a dramatic tenor one with a muttering chorus, opera buffa-like, an alto one with hunting horn effects, a soprano one with woodwind solos and a florid, highly expressive one for the tenor. There is some solemn writing for the chorus, including a brief fugue, and a cheerful, optimistic ending, C major overtaking the predominant C minor.
I won't pretend this is high-quality music, but there are certainly interesting ideas in it, worked out by a composer with a decent technique, and the glimpse the work affords of late eighteenth-century Italian liturgical music, the nature of its expression and its relation to the opera house, is fascinating. It would have been more so with a better performance and recording. The sound here is indifferent, oddly boxed-in for a recording made live in the cathedral of Gazzaniga's native Verona, and the ensemble and intonation are undependable, while the solo singing is none too stylish-the soprano can be quite expressive but uses generous vibrato, the alto and bass are somewhat pallid, and the tenor is often severely strained by the high-lying lines. Still, I am glad to have had the chance to hear this record, and the curious listener will find things to relish in spite of the slightly amateurish presentation.'