In 2018, the Styriarte Festival in Graz launched, in collaboration with Zefiro, a project to rediscover the operatic output of the Styrian composer Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741), Kapellmeister at the imperial court in Vienna for forty years, with the aim of restaging six of his nineteen operas, one per year. With a cast of Baroque vocal specialists, led by Monica Piccinini and Carlotta Colombo, this set of La corona d’Arianna represents the second instalment of the Arcana series which documents the recordings made in the course of this six-year cycle, following the success of Dafne in lauro (A488, 2021 – awarded Gramophone Editor’s Choice and rated Eccezionale by Musica).

Harnoncourt offers us two wonderful religious works of the great Mozart: Missa K. 257 and Litaniae de venerabili altaris sacramento K. 243. Works of great musical beauty where the Arnold Schoenber Choir gives us an excellent interpretation. The soloists, especially the soprano Angela Maria Blasi, magnificent.

In l769, Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart, who had already excited great wonder as a child prodigy, turned into an adolescent youth. As of 1770, he assumed the name Wolfgang Amadeo, and this had symbolic value: henceforth, he regarded himself definitively as an artist in his own right. The experiences of his travels as a wunderkind now belonged to the past. In addition to the marvellous church music of his native Salzburg, he had got to know the major European music centres, and had been able to familiarize himself with both traditional styles and the latest stylistic trends.

Come his last mass to be written in Salzburg, Mozart had an ulterior purpose: to annoy the Prince-Archbishop. Einstein highlights the Gloria. It features an extended "Amen". Its prolongation was designed to inflame the cleric who was no fan of florid church-music. Mention should also be made of the Kyrie with its droll interjections - penitential this ain't. The motif that Mozart uses to unify the Credo is a pale imitation of its counterpart in the Coronation Mass. The Salzburger is back to best form with the fugal Benedictus in A Minor; similarly, he later cannibalised the Agnus Dei when he came to write Figaro. Two other works feature on this disc. Note-spinning predominates in the Litany, K 125; it's sole redeeming feature is the high-spirited Kyrie which only Mozart could have written.

Haydn’s late masterpiece, The Creation/Die Schöpfung has always existed in two versions, one in English and one in German. Loosely based on Milton’s Paradise Lost version of the creation story, the libretto had actually been offered to Handel, who never got around to setting it. Johann Salomon, the impresario, passed it to Haydn in 1794. Haydn was interested but apparently did not feel confident enough in his English to set the work in its original format.