Antonio Rosetti was born around 1750 in Litoměřice, a town in Northern Bohemia, and was originally called Franz Anton Rösler. In 1773 he left this native country and joined the Hofkapelle of Prince von Oettingen-Wallerstein, whom he served for sixteen years. With the retirement of Joseph Reicha in 1785, Rosetti rose to the position of Kapellmeister of Fürstlichen Kapelle and stayed there until 1789, before becoming Kapellmeister to the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1789. Rosetti wrote a great deal of music, including symphonies, concertos and vocal works. He is perhaps best known today for his horn concertos, which Mozart scholar H. C. Robbins Landon suggests may have been a model for Mozart's four horn concerti. Horace Fitzpatrick writes in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians: "Rosetti's contemporaries ranked him with Haydn and Mozart".

Rosetti is also known for the Requiem (1776) which was played at a memorial service for Mozart in Prague in December 1791 (the work was originally written as Requiem on the death of the Mrs. Krafft-Ernst in Oettingen-Wallerstein in 1776). This recording presents this work as world premiere recording accompanied by smaller sacred works and the symphony Murray A23.