The world-premiere recording of a hitherto unknown 1840 arrangement of Haydn’s sublime devotional cycle.

After Haydn composed The Seven Last Words for chamber orchestra as a devotional accompaniment to the Good Friday liturgy at Cadiz Cathedral in 1786, several other arrangements were made during his lifetime, by himself and others, all of them familiar to us now: as an oratorio with soloists and chorus, and in string quartet and solo keyboard transcriptions.

The cycle continued to attract arrangers after Haydn’s death. In the course of researching them, the flautist Rafael Ruibérriz de Torres turned up a manuscript by Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, who transcribed it for flute and string quartet in 1840 – perhaps as a compositional exercise at the behest of his teacher, Ramon Carnicer, who had recently produced a flute quintet of his own.

In any case, Barbieri’s arrangement presents a Romantic-era conception of Haydn’s work in which the flute part acquires the same importance as the other instruments, lending colour and brilliance to the quartet parts. At points the flute line plays in unison with one or other of the strings (almost throughout Sonata II, for example), but elsewhere his melodic and contrapuntal contributions are woven into the fabric of Haydn’s score with masterly technique and no small measure of creative inspiration.

As a composer, conductor, writer and entrepreneur, Barbieri later occupied a central role in Spanish musical culture during the 19th century. However, there is no record of a performance of his version of The Seven Last Words, which was revived by the performers here before they made this recording – perhaps the first musicians ever to play the score. As a novel perspective on the work it will attract the interest of Haydn enthusiasts everywhere. The album also forms a sequel of sorts to the Brilliant Classics recording of Boccherini’s Flute Quintets (96074) made by Rafael Ruibérriz de Torres and La Spagna.