Orchestra revives Wignacourt Museum musical archives

The Paulus orchestra held its second concert of sacred music, at St Paul’s Collegiate church in Rabat earlier this month to mark the feast of St Paul’s Shipwreck.

This second concert by the orchestra, after its inaugural performance held last June, featured a selection of Maltese compositions from the Wignacourt’s museum collection of musical scores.

Works included Lorenzo Gatt’s Te Deum and his 1891 Sancte Paule antiphon, Vincenzo Bugeja’s Tantum Ergo and Carlo Diacono’s Paolo Sacrati Litoris.

The concert, held under the patronage of Mgr John Azzopardi, curator of the Wignacourt museum, is to become an annual event for this orchestra, which was set up with the aim of promoting the work of Maltese composers and the Maltese Pauline cult.

Directed by Hermann Farrugia Frantz, the concert also saw the involvement of the Coro Bel Canto.