Opera in musica, Carlo Monza Quartets

On his travels through Italy in the 1770s, the teenage Mozart encountered several Milanese composers. Among them was Carlo Monza, whose music infused the young Austrian’s early works with Italian spontaneity and vigour. Monza’s quartets—recorded here for the first time by Italian violinist Fabio Biondi and members of his Europa Galante orchestra—are full of the freshness and energy you hear in early Mozart, but with added originality. Monza treats each one as a play in miniature, the instruments mimicking operatic forms such as dramatic arias and recitatives to bring the story of rival lovers to vivid life (Gli amanti rivali) or to conjure a night at a Milanese opera house (Opera in musica). La caccia is a thrilling depiction of a storm with a final movement that also shows Monza to be a master of simple beauty.