“Right after God comes my Papa.” These were young Wolfgang’s words of praise for his father Leopold Mozart. 2019 is the anniversary of Leopold that Aparté celebrate with a gorgeous recording of his Missa Solemnis.

Alessandro de Marchi, who ran the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music right after René Jacobs, conducts the beautiful Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie from Augsburg, where Leopold was born.

By paying homage to the father, the disc puts an end to the eternal inequality of treatment, saving the father from collective oblivion and worldwide overshadowing by the child prodigy. For a long time, the Missa Solemnis haunted Wolfgang’s catalogue but we now know for sure that it’s Leopold’s.

Committed to the Leopold legacy owing to his native city of Augsburg, the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie - together with the Das Vokalprojekt choir - approach this work afresh.

They find in Alessandro de Marchi an ally and passionate champion of unknown works, who knows how to highlight the Neapolitan subtleties from the strict contrapuntal style of this mass. For those who are desperately rummaging the secondhand market to find the only out of print recording of the Missa from 1982, an invaluable record is now available.