SYMPHONIC WORKS

In 1722, Christoph Graupner missed being appointed as the new cantor of St Thomas' Church in Leipzig by a hair and not Johann Sebastian Bach. But Graupner's employer, the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, refused to let him go. He knew exactly what a talented court conductor he had obtained around ten years prior. He was skilful at composing operas, cantatas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music and piano works and was therefore worth every penny of his handsome salary. Graupner imaginatively filled even small sacred works with life, producing great expression in even the most modest instrumentation using subtle voice leading. This is what we hear in these works, which are performed just as "agilely, nimbly and often with joyful and declamatory vigour" (Klassik-Heute) as the first recording of these so-called "Dialogue Cantatas".

Albert Lortzing, who did not even reach the age of fifty, composed a towering number of stage works, several of which are regarded as German national treasures even today. Others have proven themselves to have stood the test of time thanks to excellent recordings. Although he became immortal with his Zar und Zimmermann and Undine, his purely orchestral output is quite thin. If it were not for the concert piece for horn and a similar work for trumpet, there would only be a number of overtures and pieces of ballet music available to a symphonic ensemble to produce a colourful portrait. The WDR Funkhausorchester has thus recorded a lively mixture of soloistic brilliance, entertaining dances and "dramatic" overtures whose existence was previously only known to die-hard Lortzing fans.

Hardly any Russian composers in the 19th century who helped develop the national Romantic musical language were able to make a living from their artistic activities. They were civil servants, officers, professors of chemistry or even master builders such as Victor Ewald (1860-1935), to whom composition was purely a hobby. He hardly wrote a dozen works during the course of his life. Among these are four quintets for brass instruments, which were among the most original publications of their time. It is unmistakably Russian in every melodic nook and cranny. Three of them can be heard on this recording by the highly virtuosic Italian Gomalan Brass Quintet, who also interpret the 1970 quintet by Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977) - an effervescent and clever homage to an unforgotten homeland.

The Austrian composer Hans Gal expressed himself in practically all important areas of so-called "classical" music, and not least had great success with several of his stage works before he had to emigrate from Germany to England due to the political situation. He was obviously a very gifted creator of musical idylls, as this new recording from Finland shows. The Divertimento for Chamber Orchestra from the 1920s and the Serenade for Strings have a gracious charm that is only surpassed by the seductive, harmonically enchanting Concertino for Violin and Orchestra. The piece reveals nothing of the composer's personal circumstances or the growing threat looming over Europe - all that was good, true and beautiful was an inextinguishable source of life to Hans Gal.

Hjalmar Borgstrom has been well on the way to being rediscovered since the beginning of the new millennium. Several of his most important works were performed in his native Norway until the Second World War, after which his name long disappeared from public consciousness. Until his death in 1925, he had also played an important role as a critic. With the premiere of his two operas and above all the rediscovery of his extraordinarily picturesque symphonic tone poems, a new page has turned. This contemporary of Richard Strauss who studied with Johan Severin Svendsen and Carl Reinecke among others, proves to be a legitimate descendant of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner; it is difficult to escape the captivating boldness of his programmatic concepts and their unconventionally beautiful realisation.

Until their dissolution, the Verdi Quartet was one of the most prominent ensembles in the German chamber music scene for over three decades. They have made invaluable contributions far beyond their home with their highly-regarded complete recordings of Schubert and Brahms and the, until now, unique recordings of the string quartets of Ernst Toch. Cpo has now released the "farewell gift" of the quartet, fulfilling a long-held wish by the ensemble - the three quartets of the British "late Romantic" Ralph Vaughan Williams. These again offer the "Verdis" the opportunity to live out their much-praised virtues in all their intimacy and go full circle from his early declaration of love for the English folk song to the consoling swansong that the great composer wrote in the darkest of times at the age of 72.

"•During the 19th century Johann Strauss and his brother Josef held sway in the realm of entertaining music. • For the third time on disc, CPO demonstrates that there were other composers blessed with the gift of melodic invention. • Like his evident model Strauss had done in Vienna, Gung'l was the first to establish himself with a private orchestra in Berlin. • If there is a name that can be placed side by side with that of Johann Strauss, then it is certainly that of Josef Gungl."

Longingly awaited: L'Arte dell'Arco now at last has recorded more instrumental works by the composer Francesco Veracini for CPO. The first release met with an unanimously enthusiastic response: "Here everything fits perfectly; here instrumentalists perform with passion; here a very great ensemble is revealed. The team effort is fascinating; here musicians, friends, and kindred spirits are at work. CD of the Month" (Toccata). The goal of this project is to record Veracini's complete overtures and violin concertos and to combine them with a selection of his most interesting sonatas from the collection without opus number (1716) and his Opus 1 (1721). When these three groups of works are juxtaposed, Veracini's various stylistic characters come into even clearer view. The succinct tutti passages and the virtuosic �lan of the violin concertos meet the festive tone of the overtures, which frequently goes over into tones of greater exuberance and greater folk character, while in the sonatas chamber flexibility is articulated in which refinement and contrapuntal erudition find even clearer expression.

"What do you give the king who has everything? Well, you can always heap on the praise. Jean-Baptiste Lully made a career of doing so in the service of the formidable Louis XIV of France, nowhere more so than in "Thésée," a "tragédie en musique."...
And the music, as it needed to be for the purpose, is glorious. So, for the most part, is the performance (recorded in Bremen, Germany, last September), which grew out of a staged production of the work at the Boston Early Music Festival in 2001.
This kind of repertory is chiefly the province of William Christie in Paris these days, but the festival's artistic directors, Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs, lead an account worthy to stand beside Mr. Christie's. The work of the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra and Chorus is especially fine.
Howard Crook and Laura Pudwell head the cast attractively as Thésée and Medée. The other singers range from more than adequate to excellent."

James R. Oestreich, NEW YORK TIMES

REVIEWS:
International Record Review (4/00, pp.33-34) - "...For this fascinating recce into the no man's land between Baroque and Classical, Gaigg ably marshals her forces: formations are precise, spit and polish gleam, and in the close-range recording you can see the excitement in the whites of their eyes..."

Handel’s Almira with the BEMF. The Boston Early Music Festival has recorded George Frideric Handel’s very first opera, Almira, Queen of Castile, with a superlatively sumptuous ensemble. For its previous recordings of Baroque operas this successful ensemble has won prizes such as the Grammy, the German Record Critics Annual Prize, and the Echo Klassik. The Hungarian soprano Emoke Baráth sings the role of Almira with a choice ensemble of singers, all of whom have performed in the world’s most renowned concert halls and opera houses. Handel’s Almira is based on a freely invented plot featuring fine entertainment in the form of love and marriage schemes among the nobility, infidelity and mistaken identities, and a happy ending brought about by a court servant’s negotiations. This work was presented at the Hamburg Opera House in 1705 about twenty times and with great success. At the time Reinhard Keiser was the director of the Hamburg Opera, and he merits great praise for giving the young Handel, who then was earning his livelihood as a second tutti violinist in the orchestra pit, to compose and present an opera under his supervision. Handel’s Almira would as a work not be imaginable apart from the special circumstances prevailing at the Hamburg Opera: various styles and various languages are mixed, and it includes German and Italian arias, vocal dance numbers and da capo pieces, as well as instrumental ballet inserts of larger format. The result is indeed a colorful mixture, and the melodic signature so typical of Handel is already omnipresent and creates a fascinating unity – now heard with a top-quality ensemble!

Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Actéon is a pastorale or miniature opera based on Greek mythology. Staged in 1684, the story is about the hunter Actaeon who peeks at the bathing goddess Diana, turned into a red deer, pursued and killed by his own hounds. The music is continuously imaginative with rhythmic choral parts, elegant solos and dramatic flourishes.

Johann Abraham Schmikerer is only one of the vast number of shadowy figures from the annals of music whose life and activities are hardly known. Among other places, he is also known under the quite unflattering surname Schmierer, in no way deserved in light of his inventive compositions oriented towards the French tastes of the time. His Zodiaci musici of 1698, which is Schmikerer's only undisputed work, is now convincingly joined by the Musico-instrumentalische Gemuths-Lust of 1712 on this recording. It proves not only to be an equally enchanting collection as the "musical constellations", but is also in all likelihood the second part of the suite collection long thought lost, through which the name Schmikerer has been handed down to posterity.

Includes work(s) by Josef Myslivecek. Ensemble: L'Orfeo Baroque Orchestra. Conductor: Michi Gaigg.