by Pergolesi
Sung by April Cantelo, Sybil Michelow
The Alun Mold Madrigal Choir
Chorus-Master, Brian Hughes
with the strings of the BBC Welsh Orchestra
Leader, Colin Staveley
Harpsichord, Clifford Earnshaw
Conducted by Wyn Morris
Recorded at St. Saviour's Church, Cardiff

Stabat Mater dolorosa-Mary the mother of Jesus stood weeping at the foot of the Cross-these are the opening lines of a thirteenth-century Latin poem, probably by the Umbrian writer Jacopone da Todi.

The work has inspired many composers to set it to music, notably Haydn, Rossini, Palestrina, Dvorak, and Pergolesi.

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, one of the great masters of melody, died in 1736 at the early age of twenty-six.

One of his most famous and beloved compositions is Stabat Mater, a work commissioned by a monastery in Naples to be sung at Easter.

Wyn Morris who conducts today's performance is a Welshman who has been presented with the Mahler Medal of the Mahler and Bruckner Society of America; he was recently appointed conductor of the Royal Choral Society in place of the late Sir Malcolm Sargent.