Telemann’s Wedding Serenata Georg Philipp Telemann never missed the opportunity to delight those around him with countless compositions treating the subject of love and its consequences. The origins of his enormous achievement in this field are certainly to be sought in his personal disposition: in his exuberant joy in composition, combined with an open, optimistic attitude in his dealings with his environment, which in his works not rarely revealed his roguish sense of humor. And so he above all was very much in demand as a composer of wedding pieces. The texts of the wedding serenata »Liebe, was ist schöner als die Liebe« undeniably exhibit mirthful exuberance and belong to the most original and wittiest musical creations of all by this composer. The serenata has the form of a disputatio, a dramatic dialogue in which an advocate of marriage (Ametas, soprano) and a skeptic (Crito, tenor) are in disagreement about the usefulness of the institution of marriage. The album also includes the solo cantata “Lieben will ich,” in which the imponderables of love are celebrated in witty free texts, and the cantata “Der Weiberorden,” which quite clearly was composed in conjunction with a wedding feast and in lighter tones enables to join the young bride in joyous anticipation of her future married life.

The WESER-RENAISSANCE ensemble had two goals in mind in its concert series “Breslau – A City in the Heart of Europe”: the first was to offer musical enjoyment and the second was to remember an old cultural environment that had been forgotten for many decades. The music manuscripts and printed editions discovered in the Berlin State Library attest to the great diversity and high quality of music culture in what was once the capital of Silesia. “Die Geburt unsers Herrn and Heylands Jesu Christi” (The Birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ), a Christmas narrative by Tobias Zeutschner, who was active at Breslau’s principal churches St. Bernhardin and St. Mary Magdalene, forms the focus of the present selection from these sources in a program entitled “Weihnachten im Breslau des 17. Jahrhunderts – Festmusik in der Kirche St. Maria Magdalena” (Christmas in Seventeenth-Century Breslau – Festive Music in the Church of St. Mary Magdalene). This early example of a Biblical history composition is richly scored for eighteen voices.

There are indeed many recordings of Monteverdi’s Vespers of the Blessed Virgin, but the special thing about this particular recording is that it was produced following the performances of a scenic interpretation with the Spanish stage director Calixto Bieito. What now follows is a musical exploration forming a sequel to scenic occupation with the Vespers. Since 2017 Il Gusto Barocco has been the guest ensemble for the four-part Monteverdi cycle initiated by opera director Albrecht Puhlmann at the Mannheim National Theater. From the musician’s perspective, the scenic exploration of music rooted in the liturgy does in fact clearly differ from a performance during a religious service or a non-scenic concert performance. During the time-intensive process prior to the staging of an opera, scenes, images, and figures gradually take shape. In each stage figure the quest is for an emotional truth from which her or his artistic nature, aesthetic character, and credibility result – and ultimately word and tone, in order to produce empathy and engage the public. Another important aspect of this recording is the great number of diminutions in all the instrumental and vocal parts, all of which were improvised at the particular moment. During the shared scenic preparation for the opera stage, the individual movements of the Marian Vespers obtained a definite emotional space in the dramaturgical sequence. Accordingly, sections and their basic characters were defined and invented at the particular moment for each performance and for this recording.

On their first album featuring madrigals and canzonettas by Andrea Gabrieli, the WESER RENAISSANCE ensemble led by Manfred Cordes was already in its element. On SWR2 Radio Michael Stegemann commented: “A most highly entertaining and successful album. Perfect balance in the mixture of singers and winds, audio transparency of the polyphonic structures, great textual intelligibility.” And on the ensemble’s second Gabrieli release, now with madrigals, psalms, and organ works by this master delighting so much in experimentation, his intention and wish to offer intelligent entertainment to his fellow human beings are clearly shown. By 1566 at the latest, Andrea Gabrieli was appointed to the coveted post of organist at St. Mark’s Cathedral, and already during his lifetime he was esteemed in particular because of his enormous versatility.

When Ignaz Pleyel concluded his work on the last of his twelve “Prussian Quartets,” he had already garnered a great deal of experience as a composer of string quartets. His unmistakable musical voice had brought him countless admirers – including, not least, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who enthusiastically wrote of the Quartets op. 1 in a letter to his father. The dedicatory preface suggests that Pleyel had composed all of its pieces in Italy. He described them as “musically profound,” thereby indicating that Haydn’s Quartets op. 20 may have been their immediate model. The fugue movements in the Quartets Benton 328 and 330 are fascinating. Although Pleyel claimed that he had written them in the Italian style, Mozart was not fooled here: in their refined elegance he recognized the unique signature of Pleyel’s teacher Joseph Haydn. Nevertheless, the pupil had succeeded in writing a brilliant series of quartets in keeping with his own ideas and combining the clarity of the Italian style with the wealth of technical imagination characterizing the Viennese style.

Franz Ignaz Beck is one of the most fascinating composers of the eighteenth century, a musical visionary as well as a “genuine European” with roots in Mannheim. His opera L’isle déserte, long regarded as lost, has resurfaced in a score manuscript in France and now is celebrating its recording premiere with La Stagione Frankfurt. Magnificent music and a magnificent text! Beck’s L’isle déserte is particularly interesting in the context of music history: first, because it is by a composer who continued to await discovery; second, because a composer active in France availed himself of an Italian libretto – which continued to be an exception before 1780, especially when Metastasio was the librettist. Beck’s L’isle déserte is thus a model example of a material and text-historical adaptation and even more so of a transfer to the music theater. In other words, in Beck’s version of “The Deserted Island” Italian libretto artistry and French music theater meet, while special appeal is generated by this composer from Germany, an émigré, so to speak, who was not operating with French as his genuinely native language.

At long last our successful Reger Edition continues on its way. The critics have been more than enthusiastic about the previous releases, and Musik & Theater even stated: “These recordings number among the best currently available in the field of Reger’s organ music.” This month we are releasing Vol. 7, again with two albums in the best SS, and this time featuring Reger’s five easy-to-play Preludes and Fugues op. 56. Although the composer termed this composition “an organ work of small caliber” in a letter to the publisher Lauterbach & Kuhn, the critics reacted positively, and the organist and composer Robert Frenzel numbered its pieces, which form anything but a secondary work, “among the most poetic phenomena in the most recent organ literature.” And we absolutely have to agree with him. The generic combination of “Prelude and Fugue” is frequently assigned to the realm of so-called absolute music, but Reger’s op. 56 does not seem to belong to this world in which only the musical structure is of significance; instead, particularly the preludes, which mostly practice dynamic moderation – like many of the “pieces” from op. 59 and other works – are distinguished by a pronounced poetic character.

The premiere of Franz Lachner’s Symphony No. 6 was held in Munich on 19 April 1837 with the composer as the conductor. The Munich press termed it a “magnificent work” and an “outstanding masterpiece,” and in this truly extraordinary work Lachner refrains from the confrontational juxtaposition of large-format thematic blocks (above all occurring in his third and fifth symphonies), instead presenting a “more organic” compositional style in which motivic-thematic developments are realized step by step. Lachner’s Concertino for Bassoon and Orchestra is a work from 1824, composed during his Vienna years. He dedicated it to Theobald Hürth, who was then the Vienna Court Opera Orchestra’s principal bassoonist. It is not known whether or not Hürth ever performed this work in public, and performances of it are not documented. It is one of the earliest extant compositions by Lachner and possibly his first work with orchestra. Here Chia-Hua Hsu, the solo bassoonist of Taiwan’s Evergreen Symphony Orchestra, interprets its recording premiere.

Emmerich Kálmán: Countess Maritza. “When the evening falls, when the sun sets, when the song of the violin is heard from the puszta …” or “I too was once a fine csárdás cavalier.” The operetta and the Munich Radio Orchestra – now that is a passionate relationship that has grown over many years. Now we are releasing one of the most performed works in German-speaking Europe: Emmerich Kálmán’s successful operetta (with which he rounded off the dozen) Gräfin Mariza (Countess Maritza), which according to the German Music Information Center in 2016 was No. 10 on the operetta hit list. For the conductor’s job the Munich Radio Orchestra once again sought out a proven operetta specialist: Ernst Theis. The work tells the story of a countess who amidst much confusion finds her true love in an impoverished count. The music with hits like “Komm mit nach Varazdin,” “Komm Zigan, spiel mir was vor!,” and “Wo wohnt die Liebe?” made the operetta famous and a favorite with the public.