A compelling programme of Christmas music from 17th-century Hamburg.

With this disc Manfred Cordes once again sheds light on the rich musical culture of 17th-century Hamburg. He usually does so with his own ensemble, Weser-Renaissance. This time he directs the Bremer Barock Consort, a group of students from the early music department of the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen. It consists here of five sopranos, two altos, two tenors and two basses, two violins, three viole da gamba, two players of cornett and recorder, two sackbuts, dulcian, chitarrone and organ as well as two organists who play the solo items.

These forces are used in various combinations for a programme which gives a good idea of the variety of the 17th century repertoire written for the churches in Hamburg. It varies from a small-scale piece for three solo voices, two violins and bc, like Christoph Bernhard's Ach, mein herzliebes Jesulein, to large-scale works in polychoral style such as Hieronymus Praetorius's Angelus ad pastores ait. In his liner-notes Manfred Cordes gives this description of music in Hamburg: "The motet traditions of the late sixteenth century were still alive and mixed with the influences of the Venetian polychorality, with the coloration techniques also reaching the North somewhat belatedly from Italy, and above all with the new concertizing style over the thorough bass with its intensified expressive possibilities." The programme on this disc bears witness to this description.

The first item is written in the Venetian polychoral style, although the composer, Hieronymus Praetorius, has never been in Italy himself. He uses a traditional text, Angelus ad pastores ait, to which fragments from a traditional German hymn are added, 'Puer natus in Bethlehem (Ein Kind geborn zu Bethlehem)'. The next piece is a Magnificat for eight voices in two choirs. It is an alternatim setting: the odd verses are in plainchant. But Praetorius also interpolated Christmas hymns, just like Johann Sebastian Bach did much later in the E flat version of his Magnificat. Here two hymns are included: 'Joseph, lieber Joseph mein' and 'In dulci jubilo', one of the most famous Christmas songs of all time.

In his liner-notes Manfred Cordes refers to the still living tradition of the 16th century. Motets by masters of the polyphony were still held in high regard in Germany in the 17th century, and were often intavolated for organ. Thomas Selle's sacred concerto Videntes stellam magi is also based on a 16th-century piece, a motet with the same title by Orlandus Lassus. Liturgically this piece is for Epiphany as it is about the magi travelling to Bethlehem to pay honour to the new-born king.

The dialogue is a typical 17th-century format. The purest form can be found here in Gegrüßest seist du, Holdselige by Matthias Weckmann, in which the angel announces Jesus' birth to Mary. The angel is sung by a tenor, supported by strings, whereas the role of Mary is sung by a soprano with two recorders. In his concerto Joseph! Was da? Thomas Selle follows this pattern less strictly. Soprano, tenor and bass perform in various combinations. The rhythm of the piece gives it a pastoral character, in particular at the phrase "now help me cradle a dear little child".

Hymns play an important role in the sacred repertoire in 17th-century Hamburg. Johann Philipp Förtsch composed a sacred concerto on the hymn Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ. The seven stanzas are treated in various ways. The first is for a soprano, singing the unornamented chorale melody over abundantly ornamented string parts. In the next stanzas soprano, alto, tenor and bass sing in various combinations, mostly on original musical material, but with quotations from the chorale melody. The words "Jammertal" (vale of tears) and "kommen arm" (came in poverty) are singled out.

Christoph Bernhard was an important composer who started his career as a pupil of Heinrich Schütz in Leipzig, to which he returned later on. His output is still hardly explored; the two pieces on this disc show his qualities and his versatility. Ach, mein herzliebes Jesulein is an intimate piece: "Oh, my dear little Jesus, choose a pure soft bed for yourself my resting in this my heart's shrine, that I may never forget you". This intimacy doesn't hold the composer back from writing virtuosic ornaments in the solo parts, in particular of the two sopranos. The disc ends with his concerto Herr, nun lässest du deinen Diener, a large-scale piece for ten voices on the Canticum Simeonis, here in a German rhymed version. It begins with a sinfonia for strings on the funeral anthem 'Mit Fried und Freud'. The first line is performed tutti, then follows a virtuosic duet for two sopranos, a more restrained duet of alto and tenor and lastly a solo for bass. The piece ends with a repeat of the first vocal section. Manfred Cordes follows the composer's suggestion to use a second choir here.

A disc like this should also include some organ pieces. Organists were highly regarded in Germany in the 17th century, and Hamburg had some of the very best within its walls. Most of them were pupils of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck in Amsterdam, who was nicknamed the 'German organist builder'. Jacob Praetorius, son of Hieronymus, was one of them, and in his capacity as organist of St. Petri a key figure in Hamburg. He is represented with a free organ work, the Praeambulum in d minor. This prelude is a short brilliant piece which reflects the great skills of the composer. He was the teacher of Matthias Weckmann whose Toccata vel Praeludium 1. toni is included. With Heinrich Scheidemann we meet another Sweelinck pupil. For a long time he was organist of St. Katharinen. We know his music only from sacred songs and organ works. Here three verses from his chorale fantasia Vom Himmel hoch are played. The inclusion of Samuel Scheidt in the programme is a bit odd, as he never worked in Hamburg. It is justified by Manfred Cordes with the fact that he was also a pupil of Sweelinck. The three verses from his chorale fantasia Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ are played here as a kind of introduction to the concerto by Förtsch on the same chorale melody.

In the 17th century the basso continuo part in sacred music was usually played at the large organ rather than at a small positive. This practice is hard to follow in our time, as there are not that many organs with the right disposition and tuning, and also with enough space in the loft. After a long search a suitable church and organ were found: the St. Marien & St. Pankratius in Mariendrebber, with an organ which was built by Berend Hus - the mentor of Arp Schnitger - in 1658/59. Although it has been modified during its history the most important stops are still in their original condition. It is in 1/5 comma temperament which is appropriate for the earlier pieces in the programme. For Bernhard and Weckmann a positive was used.

The Bremer Barock Consort may consist of music students but they produce a very fine and technically impressive recording of this compelling programme of Christmas music. The ensemble is very good, and the various voices are generally excellent. Only now and then is it noticeable that these are young singers whose voices have yet to mature. Sometimes they could have gone further in exploring the expression of the texts but on the whole I am very pleased by what is offered here. The pitch of the organ is not mentioned in the booklet, but I assume it is the high organ pitch which was common in Germany in the 17th century. As a result some treble parts are very high, and the sopranos deal with them convincingly.

The booklet contains a number of errors. In the tracklist the organ piece by Weckmann is attributed to Christoph Bernhard, who never wrote any organ piece. The lyrics contain various mistakes and have the wrong track numbers from track 8 onwards.

Still, from every musical angle this is a very good production, and a great addition to any collection of Christmas discs.

-- Johan van Veen, MusicWeb International

Simplicity, purity and clarity.

This music was composed early in Josquin’s career when he was singing in the Sistine Chapel and while the cult of devotion to the Blessed Mother was at its height.

The simplicity, purity and clarity of the singing here is immediately apparent from the opening track, in which four of the eight singers used throughout sing the Vespers motet “Ave Maria” from which the themes of this paraphrase Mass are derived. Tuning is exquisite and the blend of voices unimpeachable. The difference in texture between the motets, when four or five singers are employed to sing each part, and the Ordinary of the Mass when two voices double up each of the four lines, creates a welcome variety in the density of sound. Special mention must be made of the lead Diskant (countertenor) Franz Vitzthum who soars without strain. If I have any criticism of the singing here, it is that the bass Ulfried Staber has a touch of the groaner - I could do with a little more sap in his tone - but in general Manfred Cordes has gathered here some of the finest exponents of European Early Music.

I usually prefer a deployment of voices currently frowned upon by the purists such as the Tallis Scholars employ, whereby there are more voices, some women, per part, singing at a higher pitch - but in this case, the warmth, phrasing and musicality of the vocalists here entirely convinces me.

The musical forms employed by Josquin are surprisingly varied: there are homophonic passages of stark simplicity alternating with complex polyrhythmic patterns and intricate melismata. Despite this complexity, the singers’ exemplary diction permits the liturgical text to emerge clearly. Cordes’ direction is free, flexible and fluid; no heavy-handed bar-beating here.

Lovely though the Mass is, my favourite track here remains the first motet: the upward sweep of the opening phrase and the ensuing canon are enchanting in their simplicity, then the heavenly Ur-melody is sustained right through to the transcendent close, “O mater Dei, memento mei. Amen”.

The sound engineering is admirable; just the right amount of air and space around the voices. The gold packaging is very attractive. The booklet provides Latin texts with German and English translations and a code to permit identification of which singers are singing what; unfortunately the notes tell you nothing about the music, only about the history and development of the Marian cult.

-- Ralph Moore, MusicWeb International

Die Koenigin von Saba (The Queen of Sheba) was Karl Goldmark's first opera. It conquered stages across Europe after its premiere in 1875. This production of the opera was recorded at Theater Freiburg, The four act opera stars vocalists Katerina Hebelkova and Nuttaporn Thammathi.

During his lifetime Carl Stamitz, the firstborn son of Johann Stamitz, the famous founder of the Mannheim School, became a violin and viola virtuoso and successful composer. In our Carl Stamitz Edition we are now releasing four more symphonies that were regarded as a practically ideal embodiment of sensibility because his “heart full of feeling left its imprint on his music.” Stamitz’s desire to discover and explore new paths in the composition of symphonies took him to the programmatic pastoral symphony “Le jour variable” (La promenade royale) designed in Versailles in the fall of 1772. What Stamitz presents to the ears in the way of previously “unheard-of” music would completely outshine even the programmatic pieces produced at the end of the nineteenth century. Many experts, including Hugo Riemann, were very much aware of the fact that this program symphony is a particularly interesting and remarkable composition.

Baroque Bass Cantatas from Mügeln Archive offers a representative sampling of cantatas for bass voice from St. John’s Kantorei Archive, established in Mügeln (Saxony) in 1571. The cantatas presented here are from the first half of the 18th c. and were copied during the tenure of the music director Daniel Jacob Springsguth. All the composers were from the Saxony and Thuringia regions. The CD, featuring bass baritone Klaus Mertens and the Accademia Daniel under conductor Shalev Ad-El, demonstrates that even minor masters operating in the countryside could compose on a very high level.

Gustav Jenner was the only young composer ever to receive an invitation to come to Vienna from Brahms, who wanted to keep a critical eye on his development as a composer. For this reason it is justifiable to term Jenner Brahms’s only compositional pupil. Jenner himself regarded his encounter with Brahms as the »decisive stroke of luck« in his life. The circumstance that artistic personalities around Brahms were outshone by the master’s radiant light had particularly fateful consequences for Jenner. The mere realization that he had been Brahms’s pupil immediately gave rise to the charge of epigonism and prevented him from receiving an independent evaluation. It is completely incorrect to term him a “Brahms epigone,” as frequently occurred. Although Jenner’s music is situated very much in the orbit of his teacher’s sound world, it nevertheless reveals a highly personal musical signature – also in his compositions for piano. The pianist Solvejg Henkhaus became acquainted with these works very early and has thoroughly probed this often introspective, very intensive music. Jenner’s thorough occupation with the folk song is apparent in his themes, which often are very much of cantilena character. Song quality is the decisive element in the rendering of lied melodies into themes in his instrumental music.

Of all the composers who wrote for the gamba during his times, Johann Gottlieb Graun must have been the most diligent one, even though he was not a virtuoso on this instrument. The twenty-seven works by him that are known to us represent significant contributions to the repertoire of the concerto, cantata, and sonata. All three of the works presented here contain grand solo parts for the viola da gamba that prove to be of the highest virtuosity. Graun evidently was interested in putting a virtuoso to the test. And the Italian gambist Cristiano Contadin, the founder of the Opera Prima ensemble, lives up to his reputation (as certified by the Musica magazine and other sources) as a first-class artist whose delightful delineation of tone and flawless style reveal a complete command of his instrument. The two sacred cantatas were composed in the Italian style on the basis of texts by Pietro Metastasio, the most famous librettist and poet of his times. They are sung by the American soprano Amanda Forsythe, who has won admiration especially for her interpretations of Baroque music – and is known from our cpo albums with the Boston Early Music Festival.

We have already introduced you to some of his symphonic music, chamber music, and songs, and a very positive review written in response to the first album will make you eager to hear more. Voilà: The first album with piano works by Georg Schumann, who was the director of the Sing-Akademie in Berlin and a professor of composition at the Prussian Academy of the Arts! Today he is being discovered as a late Romanticist, but during his lifetime he was regarded as a Neoromanticist. Although Georg Schumann was not a descendant of Robert Schumann, he was from the same productive Saxon cultural landscape and from a highly musical family. Early in his life he developed into a brilliant pianist who already as a youth was able to perform challenging piano concertos. It is thus not surprising that the »master of the keys« also composed quality character pieces, impressive “atmospheric pictures,” and more works for the piano. This release traces Schumann’s path from his first piano compositions through to his more mature late works; in them we not only hear influences from Wagner, Liszt, and Chopin but also witness his gradual discovery of his own personal style.

Hardly any biographical information about the composer Martin Christian Schultze has been handed down to us. On the cover of the Trattamento dell’harmonia, which was engraved and published in Paris in 1773, we find his name with the initials “M. C.” and “D. B.” (“M. C. Schultze D. B.”), which according to the RISM signifies “Martin Christian Schultze from Berlin.” The six symphonies contained in this collection may be understood as harmonic treatises. They have been written very much in the Italian style, and in them we find very many polyrhythmic elements running through all the movements – for example, frequent triplets against sixteenths. In addition, at the time Schultze must have had an outstanding gambist by his side who was able to render this extremely demanding gamba part. The violin part with many double stops and virtuosic passages likewise presupposes some talent. By contrast, the flute part more probably would have been written for an amateur. Here these pieces are interpreted by the Klingekunst Ensemble, whose members base their work on well-founded occupation with historical performance practice but also always assign foremost importance to vibrant musical communication.

Carl Goldmark was not a symphonist – and that is no secret. His few attempts in this field – an early work, in part lost, and his second symphony, his op. 35, did not add up to much, and the Ländliche Hochzeit, to which the generic label »symphony« was assigned, does nothing more than confirm that this master of orchestral colors was above all good at atmospheric and character pictures. Goldmark very evidently needed a programmatic or dramatic “pretext” in order to rise up to his creative best, which is why he was able to gain the greatest fame and to score his most important successes with his stage works (tops here: Die Königin von Saba) as well as with his concert overtures. As he himself said, a change of milieu was good for his powers of inspiration, and so he repeatedly sought out extremes while selecting his materials and subjects. Accordingly, this new album with the Bamberg Symphony and the conductor Fabrice Bollon is also a “composite”: it complements Vol. 1 (555 160-2) with a program including the three mirthful overtures Im Frühling (In the Spring), In Italien (In Italy), and Aus Jugendtagen (From the Days of Youth), the preludes to his last two operas, Götz von Berlichingen and Ein Wintermärchen (A Winter’s Tale), and a special rarity in the form of the symphonic tone picture Zrinyi – a musical monument to this Hungarian-Croatian national hero and a work with which Goldmark wanted to express his gratitude to his home Magyar territory.

When Giovanni Benedetto Platti was born, Johann Sebastian Bach was already twelve years old, and when he died, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was only two weeks short of his seventh birthday. So far scholars have not been able to unearth any significant information about this composer’s childhood and youth, and his dates make it easy to understand why posterity has assigned him to one of those perilous »transitional gap periods« from which many composers like him never reemerge. However, especially since the beginning of the new millennium Platti by exception has enjoyed something of a renaissance. From 1722 until his death in 1763 Platti served the Würzburg Prince Archbishop Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn and his hardly less renowned brothers. He was a highly regarded virtuoso and composer who as a productive musician not only was diligent but also and above all very imaginative and even fond of experimentation. The writing style of his harpsichord and cello sonatas, trios, and concertos is often so highly original that they practically had to be rediscovered sooner or later. The selection of works recorded here also shows that this Italian-in-Franconia was an artist who in particular expertly negotiated oscillating harmonic boundaries, never reached his limits with the means of expression available to him at the time, and formulated astonishing solutions to meet the needs of instrumental virtuosos.

The last volume of our series of Gade recordings based on the new critical edition of his complete oeuvre, once again includes chamber works with a long and complicated history of composition inasmuch as Gade often submitted his earlier works to later revisions – as was the case with his String Quartet No. 1 and String Quintet op. 8. He composed the latter work between his second and third symphonies and around the same time as the cantata Comala. The results clearly show that he wrote the quintet at a time when he had not yet abandoned the national Romantic ideas of his young years, even though he was already in Leipzig. On the one hand, the quintet is not based on any sort of programmatic or textual background. On the other hand, Gade had not yet assimilated the Classical-Romantic style including the independence from the Classical sonata form that would so clearly be reflected in his last chamber works. His Fantasy Pieces op. 43 and elegant character pieces are all more or less designed in a complex song form – however, with a texture that in almost all cases consists of a leading melody part in the clarinet and an accompaniment in the piano.

Nikolai Tcherepnin (not to be confused with his son Alexander!) represents a generation of composers who not only combined two diametrically opposed epochs – the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – but also followed the path of stylistic change leading from late romanticism to impressionism and from impressionism to modernism. His name stands not only for the culture of his native Russia but also in equal measure for Western European art – and especially that of France. In the symphonic prelude Princesse lointaine, a short early work, Tcherepnin develops his compositional aesthetic, and we already detect what later would be a dominant element in his mature works: an interest in legends and sagas. The ballet music for Narcissus and Echo forms the focus of this album. Tcherepnin realized the underlying ideas of the designer Léon Bakst and the choreographer Michel Fokine in his score and did so not merely in an illustrative way but on the strength of his own expressive means. The colorful gradations that Bakst discovered as an optical solution, sometimes the contrast between the Dionysian and Apollonian principles, and the contrast between the bright attire of the Booetians and the dark, muted color of the nymph Echo, who laments her unrequited love, are reflected in the changing orchestral coloration of the music. Tcherepnin’s music, in part pervaded by a tenor’s vocalises and a vocal ensemble, becomes a brilliant, highly pictorial subject. This is a stylized antiquity with an exquisiteness, beauty, and refinement integrated into a cult, and these characteristics situate the Narcissus score – one of the interesting aesthetic artistic monuments of the early twentieth century – in the vicinity of impressionism and modernism.

Along with Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Khachaturian, Dmitri Kabalevsky was one of the “Big Four” of Soviet music. Following our recordings of his four symphonies, complete works for piano and orchestra, cello concertos, string quartets, and complete piano sonatas, this release again turns to his keyboard music featuring works for piano solo, this time focusing on his complete Préludes. Bach’s idea to set a monument to the well-tempered system by writing two cycles of twenty-four preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys has continued to fascinate composers of all succeeding generations, and Kabalevsky was no exception. His multifaceted preludes not only are obliged to Scriabin but also already reveal his own personal style and show him striving to develop new harmonic solutions. Yet another interesting rarity for piano fans!

When Johann Evangelist Brandl wrote his Symphonie concertante op. 20, he had more time to concentrate on composing free of court occasions and to exploit in full his own capabilities rather than focusing on the planning and performing of concerts. Therefore his Symphonie concertante, like the one by Mozart, can be viewed as a sort of visiting card, and with it Brandl wanted to put out his feelers in quest of new appointments. Like Mozart, in his work with two solo instruments Brandl has the dimensions of the first movement noticeably expand in view of the solo concerto and in this way gives both soloists space and time to present all the themes and motifs in succession as well as to elaborate them with great virtuosity. What our two soloists, the Castro-Balbi brothers, display in breathtaking virtuosity is simply sensational. Brandl had composed his four-movement Symphony in D major with a dazzling finale as a “Grande Simphonie à grand Orchestre” some ten years earlier. Already then Brandl anticipated a lot of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony op. 60, which first was completed in 1806. Something of the quest for new sound worlds that the Rhinelander Beethoven envisioned is also in evidence in Brandl, who was ten years his senior. Today musicologists are discovering in Brandl an artist whose musical language above all toward the end of his creative career surmounted the style of Classicism and instead favored a sharpened chromaticism and already exhibited Early Romantic characteristics.

Following the successful edition featuring Dvorák's complete string quartets, the Vogler Quartet releases more chamber music by this composer. During the course of his life Dvorák penned more than forty works for chamber ensemble. While most of his symphonies are most famous, they were often "sandwiched' between numberous chamber works.

REVIEW:

It is always an unexpected and very special surprise to receive a disc of very familiar works you already have multiple recordings of and have heard countless times, but one of such singular beauty that it causes you to fall in love with the music all over again, as if you were hearing it for the first time. Such is the magic of these performances of Dvořák’s String Quintet in E♭-Major and Piano Quintet in A Major, op. 81—I include the distinguishing opus number here because the composer wrote an earlier piano quintet in the same key, designated op. 5.

I’m not usually at a loss for words, but there’s not much else I can say other than that these are the most enrapturing performances of these two works I’ve ever heard, either live or on record. The balance between the instruments is such that tiny details emerge that one simply doesn’t hear in other recordings.

— Fanfare (Jerry Dubins)

Today Lena Neudauer is in great demand as a musician who delights an international public with the clarity, power, charm, and emotional depth of her violin playing. For this reason, following her successful interpretation of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto for cpo, we now are also very delighted to have obtained her services for the interpretation of three violin concertos by Antonio Rosetti: she has a special place in her heart for this charming composer, and her stupendous virtuosity enables her to rise to the challenge of the high technical demands of his concertos. Movements of exuberant freshness flow and overflow with performance joy, and these three concertos once again display Rosetti’s tendency to endow the first movements of his solo concertos with extensive orchestral introductions and richly diverse musical material. This is listening pleasure of a special kind!

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.

On her solo debut album, Muffat Meets Handel, the successful young harpsichordist Flóra Fábri performs harpsichord pieces by precisely these two composers. Although the dates of the two musicians overlap for a period of almost seventy years, the same thing happened in this case as with many of Handel’s contemporaries: the two never met personally. However, unlike Bach and Mattheson, here musical awareness of the other did not operate in accordance with a »one-way-street principle«: it was not only Muffat who admired Handel and arranged his music; the process also functioned the other way around. In contrast to Handel’s Muffat arrangements, in his Handel arrangements Gottlieb Muffat dealt much more gently with the originals and left many parameters unchanged. Something like a relationship of “soul mates” can be detected in their mutual inclination to arrange each other’s works. This in turn forms the essential prerequisite for the dialogue of minds on which the program on this album draws: the adventure of a conversation between two exceptional musical talents without the use of language, without any direct physical contact, and over a distance of at least 1, 593 kilometers (as the crow flies). It is first when the creative production of the one flows into the other’s work that it has the chance to grow beyond itself.

Vol. 2 once again demonstrates the unique stylistic quality of Felix Draeseke’s works for strings. When the composer turned to the quartet genre, he ventured onto compositional terrain largely regarded as the domain of composers of traditional orientation. Wagner’s influence is also found in Draeseke’s quartets, though not in the form of an imitation of Wagnerian composing but as a creative rendering of the Classical composers as they had been conveyed to Draeseke by Wagner. The idea of the “melodic thread” running through the music and unifying it is everywhere in evidence in these works. The composer’s third quartet, his op. 66, was regularly performed in Central Germany during his lifetime – for instance, in Leipzig in 1911, when the Gewandhaus Quartet included it on the program for the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Franz Liszt’s birth. Draeseke’s op. 66 quartet differs from all of his other works in sonata form in that it is designed in five movements, a structure reminding us both of Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor op. 132 and Haydn’s early quartet divertimenti. Both spheres, the sublime tone of the “Heiliger Dankgesang” and the carefree mood of the cassations and serenades, seem to occur in continuous mutual interpenetration in this work. The “most feared contrapuntist” reveals his strictest mien, while at the same time showing that he is a subtle humorist who in particular delights in play with metrical emphases.

Over many decades the enduring impression internationally was that between Fryderyk Chopin and Karol Szymanowski there had been no significant composers in Poland. However, when this country was not a state, it brought forth other highly talented musicians who stood the test of European comparison with flying colors. Two of them were closely acquainted personally through a teacher-pupil relationship and warm ties of friendship: Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Zygmunt Stojowski, and for some years now the compositions of the two have enjoyed new esteem. Paderewski’s Sonata op. 13 may rightly claim a place side by side with famous works by Edvard Grieg, Johannes Brahms, and César Franck. Paderewski immediately demonstrates his command of the latest developments in the European art of music. The beginning of the first movement combines a piano accompaniment of stormy animation with a violin theme of sweeping breadth that on the one hand could have been taken from a symphony by Bruckner and on the other hand could represent a minor variant of the concluding apotheosis in Grieg’s Piano Concerto. The violinist Wladyslaw Górski offered Stojowski insights into his instrument’s capabilities when the composer was a young man, and Stojowski’s first violin sonata, a most highly effectively composed work, documents this expert tutelage.

Telemann World-Premiere Recordings. Between 1717 and 1765 Georg Philipp Telemann composed more than 1, 700 cantatas for performance on all the Sundays of the church year. Some dozen annual cycles from his period as music director in Frankfurt am Main and above all those from his Hamburg years have come down to us. In quantitative terms, the four Sundays of Advent and the three days of Christmas are the most strongly represented – with almost about two hundred cantatas. Apart from the cantatas for solo voice and solo instrument with basso continuo from his anthology Harmonischer Gottesdienst of 1725, only a few compositions for larger ensembles from this treasure trove have been edited and recorded. This album features four cantatas by Telemann that may be regarded as world-premiere recordings. They are musical gems that impress us with their melodic originality and musical character and even after more than 250 years are very much worth being performed again!

“No matter how one might try, one cannot be unkind to Mr. Bertini: he can bring one beside oneself with his friendliness and all his finely fragrant Parisian expressions; his music has the feel of pure satin and silk.” In his Neue Zeitschrift für Musik Robert Schumann gave numerous fellow musicians who rubbed him the wrong way a solid piece of his own mind, but he never found anything to hold against Henri Bertini, a French composer who was twelve years his senior. Although he was a little indirect in his praise, he was right: in the music of this once highly esteemed pianist, piano teacher, and composer there is nothing irritating, nothing that might offend good taste – and yet we never have the impression that here we have a composer who eliminated every trace of »modernity« merely to win public favor. Friendliness apparently was a characteristic trait of this musician who was born in London in 1798 and died in Meylan, near Grenoble, in 1876. He never attempted to go at everything headfirst to prove that it was possible to shatter the sound barrier. His countless études and learning pieces were so very popular internationally because a natural music flows in them, offering welcome expressive opportunities to the pupil. And his finely crafted chamber compositions – from the duo sonata to the nonet – form a catalogue’s trove of treasures combining a very fine ear with great narrative talent. Two of these magnificent pieces from the late 1830s – the Piano Trio op. 43 and the Nonet op. 107 – inaugurate this vibrant work series that would be a top wish for a complete recording edition and definitely in every way represents a valuable contribution to the repertoire.

Our Leo Fall cycle continues with Die Rose von Stambul (The Rose of Stamboul). This operetta in three acts offers music that is full of feeling. This highly emotional work celebrated its premiere with great success at the Theater an der Wien in 1916. Die Rose von Stambul’s 422 straight performances made it the most successful operetta in the history of the Theater an der Wien, next to Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow. Within the shortest time performances followed throughout Central Europe. However, like Emmerich Kálmán’s The Csárdás Princess, it did not become an international success – primarily because of World War I, since the theaters of the Allied counties had stopped staging German-language works. Achmed Bey, the son of a Turkish minister, is married to Kondja, “The Rose of Stamboul.” However, she has exchanged letters with a passionate novelist and fallen in love with him. What she does not suspect: none other than her husband is behind this pseudonym –which provides plenty of opportunities for the expression of emotions – rendered in the Viennese waltz mode (“Ein Walzer muss es sein”) or tunes of Oriental flair.

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.