Michael Gielen conducts Mozart & Haydn

This recording brings together two of the biggest sacred works written by Mozart and Haydn, the friends and contemporaries caught at opposite ends of their musical lives. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed the substantial Mass in C minor (K. 139) for the consecration of the Waisenhaus (Orphanage) Church in the Rennweg when he was just twelve years old. The Mass received its first performance on 7 December 1768. While Mozart was overseeing the consecration of the Waisenhaus, Joseph Haydn was in the third year of his promotion to Kapellmeister at the palace of Esterházy, under Prince Nikolaus I. It was a post to which he returned in 1795, serving under Nikolaus II on a part time basis. This second term saw the composition of six Masses, with the penultimate – nicknamed the ‘Nelson Mass’ – widely regarded as his finest setting.