Spirited Bassoon Cantatas. During the eighteenth century the knowledge that the bassoon could very well rise up to the virtuosic spheres was reserved for only rather small circles of hearers. After all, the employment of this instrument depended directly on the particular musician’s capabilities in playing technique. In April 1736 a new bassoon star in the person of Johann Christian Klotsch came from Zerbst to Darmstadt. Christoph Graupner must have been extremely delighted to work with this talented musician; Klotsch had only recently been under contract in Darmstadt when he was given multiple opportunities to demonstrate his bassoonist’s skill in the Sunday cantatas. Since Graupner loved to experiment with innovative tone colors, he increasingly placed the bassoon in the spotlight in his cantatas. This development reached its height in 1741 with bassoon parts of concerto character in sixteen different cantatas. Sergio Azzolini is currently a star of today’s Baroque scene. When he plays his bassoon, the music is brought to life, and on this album with vocal soloists and the Kirchheim BachConsort he has “revived” (in the truest sense of the term) church cantatas with obbligato bassoon by Graupner. Sergio Azzolini comments: “The Baroque bassoon is fragile. And this fits this music because the music too is fragile. The Baroque bassoon is one part, and the player has to do the rest, that is, our body. For this reason we are also very close to the singer. And I believe that Graupner understood that, and it was precisely this that he celebrated.”

The focus of our further cooperative effort with the Cappella Aquileia and Marcus Bosch – for the Beethoven Year and with “Beethoven and the Theater” as its theme – is formed by a complete recording of this composer’s stage music for Konig Stephan (King Stephen). Archduke Franz Josef Karl of Austria had a new theater built for the city of Pest as a reward for the loyalty of the Hungarians to the Austrian monarchy. As was fitting for the occasion, Beethoven was given the commission for music commemorating the establishment of the Kingdom of Hungary by King Stephen I, and the music was premiered in the new edifice in 1812. The text for Konig Stephan was penned by August von Kotzebue and surely would have been forgotten long ago if not for Beethoven’s music. The pathos and hero worship in its verses are not so easily grasped today, but this should not stand in the way of the work’s performance. Understood as a historical memorial, Konig Stephan, in particular in the meticulous modernization of the text produced by Kai Weßler for this recording, is a rewarding work. Three versions each of the Leonore Overture and the Fidelio Overture round off the album.

Francois-Joseph Gossec was doubtless one of the most prominent French composers of the eighteenth century and wrote works representing almost all the musical forms and genres. Our recording of his symphonic music has just been awarded an Opus Klassik 2020, and now we would like to share some of his magnificent vocal works with you – since his oratorios and truly amazing Messe des Morts also made him a trailblazing figure. La Nativite to a text by Gossec’s contemporary Michel Paul Guy de Chabanon is his most famous oratorio. It was premiered on Christmas Eve in 1774 and went on to be performed no fewer than nine times in the Concert Spirituel. The impact was immediate, and critics vied with each other to formulate poetic descriptions of the orchestral effects and the impressive parts sung by the Shepherdess, the Shepherd, and the Choirs of the Angels and the Shepherds. This is moving music!

Michel-Richard Delalande is regarded as one of the great composers of the French Baroque, and so it is not surprising that our prizewinning Boston Early Music Ensemble has now turned to him. Along with his many sacred works, Delalande also wrote for the court occasions that required secular music. Les Fontaines de Versailles, the work occupying a central position on this release, above all contributed to Delalande’s increasing popularity. It was performed on 5 April 1683, some weeks before Delalande was appointed to the coveted post of “Sous-maître de Chapelle.” After the court had settled in Versailles with King Louis XIV in 1682, its musical microcosm also experienced a renewal. Les Fontaines de Versailles numbered among Delalande’s efforts to produce an oeuvre perfectly tailored for Versailles, both in its form as well as in its poetic content, thereby demonstrating his skill as a composer of »French music« and displaying it in a proper light for the king. It is with refined sophistication that Les Fontaines de Versailles evokes the special relationship between the king and his gardens. Delalande beyond doubt occupied the first place among Louis XIV’s favorites: in 1689 the king named the thirty-one-year-old his “Surintendant de la Musique de la Chambre,” a post that before only Jean-Baptiste Lully and then one of his sons had held.

For the biographer Karl Holl chamber music was “Friedrich Gernsheim’s very special artistic domain.” The composer again and again returned to this field during the course of his life, from his beginnings in Leipzig and Paris to his later Berlin years. The violin sonatas in particular stand out in this group within his oeuvre because they, more than any other genre, document his compositional development. Things began with the fourteen-year-old’s Sonata in E minor, composed for exercise purposes in Leipzig and heard here for the first time on album, and continued by way of his op. 4, his first full-fledged contribution to this genre, to the mature opp. 50, 64, and 85, with thirteen to fourteen years separating the composition of each of these works. The fourth sonata, a work dedicated to Henri Marteau, may be regarded as the high point of Gernsheim’s duo oeuvre: here his contrapuntal line of thought, something that he had always cultivated, extends over the entire composition.

The Swiss-Chinese pianist Melodie Zhao teams up with the Camerata Schweiz and Howard Griffiths on this complete recording of Joseph Haydn’s concertos for keyboard instruments – for harpsichord, for pianoforte, and surprisingly also for organ. Although Haydn’s organ concertos were originally intended for the sacred setting of the Catholic liturgy, during his lifetime and with his approval they circulated exclusively and more widely for “secular instruments,” which means that they are excellently suited for the modern piano. The recording is based on the instrumental assignments and score text in the musicological complete edition of Haydn’s works, and the compositions originally intended for the organ are heard here for the first time following the new edition of 2020.

Two rarely performed piano trios by Sylvio Lazzari and Wilhelm Kienzl form the core of this album. Lazzari’s Piano Trio op. 13 is characterized by a passionate tone and displays the composer’s dramatic talent; like Kienzl, Lazzari would later become first and foremost an opera composer. Sylvio Lazzari was known for his skillfully crafted, sonorous music. In comparison with Lazzari’s work, the piano trio by Wilhelm Kienzl is even more melodic and full of verve, even if it is also more conventional – which is not surprising since it is by a twenty-three-year-old student. His piano trio is full of youthful freshness. At times Kienzl’s music exhibits flowing structures reminiscent of Schubert, and a hint of salon music wafts through the piece. À propos: Wilhelm Jeral’s “Sérénade Viennoise,” arranged for piano trio, is presented as a charming encore. This musical gem with “Wiener Schmäh,” as irresistible as a slice of plum cake with whipped cream on top, is congenially brought to the musical table!

It is difficult to understand why the twelve sonatas by Johann Philipp Krieger recorded here are almost completely forgotten today. Those who listen more closely to them will discover a rich cosmos of melodic, harmonic, and stylistic ideas that could hardly be rendered more vividly in musical tones. These Baroque sonatas seemingly randomly join together the most sparkling strands of pearls – short and very short little movements, spontaneous ideas, witty episodes, and oscillating emotional states in what are rapid and above all fascinating sequences. They are to be understood as little scenes of a musical drama “en miniature.” Krieger’s sonatas structured in small units recall characters on the stage in their careful design and perfect compositional-technical elaboration. They engage in cooperative action, oppose each other, and react to each other, enter into musical dialogue or competition, fall in love with each other and rise up in mutual embrace, and laugh or cry together – just as in real life.

The Enea Baroque Orchestra, founded by the mezzo-soprano Francesca Ascioti in 2018, is currently regarded as the best Roman Baroque authority because of the high quality of its musicians. On this album the ensemble turns to Johann Adolf Hasse’s masterpiece, the Neapolitan Baroque opera Enea in Caonia (Aeneas in Chaonia), a genuine gem within the genre of the serenata. The libretto was inspired by Book III of Vergil’s Aeneid, the most famous epic poem in Latin literature. It was very fortunate that Hasse and Aeneas “crossed paths” in Italy, for both of them a new adoptive home, and breathed new life into this work. It was from Italy, where Hasse composed this work at the young age of twenty-seven, that he went on to become one of the most popular and most sought-after opera composers of his times – not only in Italy but throughout Europe. We have obtained the services of the excellent Italian violin virtuoso and conductor Stefano Montanari as our principal conductor, and he will also lead this first complete recording of Enea in Caonia.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Adolph Bernhard Marx composed his three-part oratorio Moses for soloists, chorus, and full orchestra not for a religious service but for performance in the concert hall and drew on the Books of Moses and other parts of the Old Testament to write his libretto for it. Moses celebrated its premiere in Breslau in 1841, and no doubt about it: this contentious work had a polarizing effect and sparked a fundamental debate in the music press about the genre of the “oratorio” when it was less a sacred work and more a music drama. However, Marx had merely wanted to create something new with his Moses. Going beyond a traditional oratorio, it was supposed to be progressive in design, harmony, and dramaturgy. From today’s perspective, it is a work between Mendelssohn and Wagner. Characteristic instruments lend each of the arias an individual color. For example, the mournful oboe joins Miriam in expressing the distress of the people of Israel in the first part; the trombones frequently endow the words of Moses and Aaron with prophetic dignity and weight; the clarinet gently intones the choral prayer at the beginning of the third part; the piccolo contributes shrill tones to the descent into hell; and the trumpet employs mighty fanfares to underscore the exhortation uttered by Moses: “Up, people of the Lord, be strong in your God!”

Hans Eklund numbers among the Swedish composers who gained public notice in the 1950s following his studies at the Royal Music Academy from 1947 to 1952 with Lars-Erik Larsson, one of his country’s most popular composers. Although Eklund was one of the very first Swedish composers whose music was performed at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, his music never abandoned tonality. Eklund wrote a total of thirteen symphonies. With the exception of the fourth, all of these works have richly associative Italian titles. His third symphony was inspired by the landscape and folk music of the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, while in his fifth symphony he deals with the subversive powers of war. The music sounds grey, sharper, not so smooth rhythmically, and hotter. Although Eklund termed his eleventh symphony of 1995 the “Sinfonia piccola,” it is ironically one of his longest such works as well as a memorial tribute to his honored teacher Lars-Erik Larsson. The time to rediscover this important symphonist is now!