Johann Gottlieb Graun

Wind Chamber Music

Musicaphon

$9.99

July 25, 2025

Chamber music by the Graun brothers in various ensembles for woodwind and strings. A highly varied album that provides a good insight into the sophisticated entertainment music of the High Baroque period.

Concert In Sanssouci / Roy Goodman, The Hanover Band

RCA

$17.99

January 14, 2008

Though Johann Kirnberger does not appear to have been of the inner circle, the Allegro of his Symphony in D which opens this well-planned concert embodies the very spirit of the carefree palace. Not that Sanssouci was ever quite that, as Voltaire discovered having risked once too often a verbal nonchalance on the subject of military matters, which were still of prime importance to his host when not playing the flute. Frederick’s delight in that instrument was assiduously looked after by Kammermusicus Quantz, also well represented here. The Flute Concerto in G is probably one of many (he reputedly wrote some 30 flute concertos and no doubt several are in G major), but it is a pleasing specimen, with a jolly first movement, a still more jovial third, and, in between, one of those adagios which the King is said to have played so well. C. P. E. Bach, best but not most highly valued of the court composers, provides an oboe concerto, the opening allegro scurrying about and taking full advantage of being the only movement not to have an inhibiting ma non troppo attached. Interspersed are some arias from the operas of C. H. Graun, including one from Rodelinda, the first of his 26.

Natalie Stutzmann sings these with a voice to cause a fair degree of souci among the chandeliers. Her deep contralto has a full-bodied resonance, sumptuous in quality and proficient in the trill. The concertos have admirable soloists, the period instruments bringing both delicacy and strength. Roy Goodman’s Hanover Band convey a sense of enjoyment in their playing and are keenly alert to the rhythmic liveliness of their music.

-- Gramophone [11/1997]

Graun: Te Deum, Motets / Fritz Näf

CPO

$18.99

September 26, 2006

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Recordings of programs like this, competent and fundamentally satisfying as they are, only serve to confirm the difference between composers such as Bach, Mozart, and Haydn and those like Carl Heinrich Graun, whose life and career fell roughly in the middle of those three giants, but whose inventive capacity was more functional and skillful than transcendent or ingenious. The Te Deum is appropriately grand (written to honor the Prussian defeat of the Austrians in 1757) and contains a lively orchestral introduction, followed by a suitably emphatic, melodically catchy choral affirmation of the work's theme of praise. Throughout the piece the orchestral accompaniment is distinguished by varied strokes of color (especially effective use of horns and winds) and nifty string figures that not only fill out the texture but enhance and even illuminate the choral commentary. There are many solos, lots of fine fugal sections, and strongly written choruses; there's also a beautiful duet for alto and tenor ("Te ergo quaesumus").

But the basic problem here for listeners is that Graun's music is not consummately interesting or structurally inventive enough to warrant the 45 minutes he devotes to the explication of this familiar if somewhat lengthy text. The weakest material comes in the longer solos--surprising due to the fact that Graun was best known in his time as an opera composer. The three motets are very well-crafted, the second one especially--Lasset uns freuen und fröhlich sein--with its Bach-like contrasts both between voice-parts and from section to section, ending with a lovely fugue. The choral singing is very solid, the soloists generally engaging and technically sure, and the orchestra under Fritz Näf provides attentive support and polished sound. While this is not the greatest music of its time, it nevertheless reflects the very high standard of court sacred music in Berlin in the mid-18th century and stands as a reference for the work of a composer whom Bach himself was known to have admired. CPO completes the package with vibrant, clear sound, well-balanced among and between chorus, soloists, and orchestra.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Johann Gottlieb Graun, Carl Heinrich Graun: Concerti

CPO

$18.99

March 29, 2011

The name Graun is not as well known in musical circles as it should be, nor even as it once was. It was the surname of three talented brothers, all born in Wahrenbrück in east-central Germany and all flourishing in the period between Bach and Beethoven. A church fire destroyed all record of their birth, hence the imprecise dates. The oldest, August Friedrich (1698/9 – 1765) achieved only local distinction, rising to the position of Kantor and organist at the cathedral school of nearby Merseberg, a position he held for the last 36 years of his life.

His two younger brothers, represented on this disc, achieved much broader fame. Johann Gottlieb, a year or so older than his brother, was engaged in 1726-27 to teach J.S. Bach’s oldest son Wilhelm Friedemann to play the violin. In 1732 he earned a position in the orchestra of the then Prussian Crown Prince Frederick, and rose to the position of director after the prince was crowned King Frederick II in 1740.

Frederick the Great built the strongest musical centre in all Europe, and the Graun brothers helped him do it. The youngest, Carl Heinrich, a professional singer in the town choir at age 10, was soon writing operas and sacred music. He studied at the University of Leipzig and became a good cellist without ever studying the instrument. But it was as a singer and opera composer that he too caught the ear of Frederick the Great. Graun wrote, and starred in, operas, sometimes to librettos written by the King.

History has not been kind to the Grauns, as most of their music seems to have been destroyed. Even what’s left is contentious: The manuscript for the third piece on this disc has only the attribution “di Grau..” leading scholars to think it more likely that Christoph Graupner (1683–1770) wrote it. All the works on this disc represent some of the best of the orchestral High Baroque, but that is not what Carl Heinrich Graun was best known for. Besides his operas, he wrote sacred music, notably Der Tod Jesu, a passion oratorio that received annual performances in Germany for 75 years until Mendelssohn conducted Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in 1829. C. H. Graun’s best known composition was supplanted forever.

I like the variety of selections on this disc. It begins with a Symphony, as tuneful and brief as the symphonies of English contemporary William Boyce. Then follow four concertos for different combinations of instruments all reminiscent of contemporary Telemann. All five pieces have a fast-slow-fast pattern, all feature the gritty sound of baroque strings, and one can hear in each of the slow movements the background of a basso continuo (mislabelled in the notes as a ‘bassoon continuo’).

The five pieces here are as close as one is likely to get to what was heard at the court of Frederick the Great. The performers are all from the leading Baroque orchestras in and around Germany, notably the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Camerata Köln, and Concentus Musicus Wien, and they all teach at the Institute of Historical Interpretation Practice at the College of Music and the Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main. The work of Karl Kaiser on transverse flute is especially outstanding. The 17 musicians came together in 2006 and have made three recordings. I hope they introduce us to more of the Grauns’ music.

-- Paul Kennedy, MusicWeb International

Graun: Easter Oratorio / Willens, Kobow, Wolf, Saskova, Koufochristou

CPO

$18.99

April 30, 2013

GRAUN Osteroratorium • Michael Alexander Willens, cond; Nina Koufochristou (sop); Dagmar Saskova (alt); Jan Kobow (ten); Andreas Wolf (bs); Kölner Akademie • CPO 7777942 (64:08 Text and Translation)

As with much of the oeuvre of Carl Heinrich Graun (1704–59), the date of composition of his Easter Oratorio is unknown. Based on stylistic grounds, it probably belongs among his earlier works composed in Dresden or Braunschweig (Brunswick), before he moved to Prussia in 1735 and ultimately became Kapellmeister to Frederick II. It survives in a single manuscript copy by an unknown hand from the later 18th century, and the librettist is not named. It is divided into four sections, for performance respectively on Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, Easter Tuesday, and the First Sunday after Easter in the liturgical calendar. Except for two brief verses taken from the Bible, the text consists of poetic meditations on Christ, his resurrection, and the import of those for the true believer.

Today, Graun remains remembered almost solely for his Passiontide oratorio Der Tod Jesu , which was performed every Good Friday by the Berlin Singakademie for a span of almost 130 years (see my review of the Pál Németh recording on Hungaroton in 34:1). The redoubtable CPO label is primarily responsible for what little more knowledge most of us have of the composer’s music, having previously issued recordings of the Christmas Oratorio , the Grosse Passion , the opera Montezuma , and single discs of sacred motets and instrumental concerti. The Harmonia Mundi label also issued a recording of the opera Cleopatra e Cesare conducted by René Jacobs. Reactions to these additional works by the Fanfare critics who have reviewed them—Bertil van Boer, Michael Carter, Henry Fogel, Ronald E. Grames, David Johnson, and David L. Kirk—have expressed sharply divided views on their merits. Some have found Graun to be a dull Kapellmeister and routine note-spinner, whereas others have expressed pleasure at the restoration of a skilled if second-rank composer to living memory.

In this instance, at least, my vote joins those in the second camp. This is a lovely and delightful work, which astonishes by its remarkable stylistic similarities to Handel in its harmonic and melodic contours. Indeed, had someone played selected parts of it for me and told me it was a recently rediscovered work by Handel from a German source, I would have believed it. The orchestration is somewhat more brilliant than Handel employs in e.g., Messiah ; the 24 members of the instrumental ensemble include pairs of flutes, oboes, bassoons, and horns, plus three trumpets, timpani, organ, and strings. The superb quartet of vocal soloists—a veritable model for recordings of such repertoire, even if tenor Jan Kobow is not quite as suave of voice as his colleagues—also serves as the chorus when needed. The Kölner Akademie is likewise beyond praise, and conductor Michael Alexander Willens exploits every bar of the score to fullest expressive effect. CPO provides its usual copious booklet notes and stellar recorded sound in addition to a complete German-English text. (Very oddly, in the English texts there are a number of words printed with random single space gaps dividing them into two parts.) For anyone looking to go beyond Bach and Handel for worthy exemplars of late-Baroque sacred music, this recording should be a prime choice; highly recommended.

FANFARE: James A. Altena