“Graupner holds in store music of the highest artistic sophistication. Flawless vocal achievements and an orchestra that savors all the color nuances of Graupner’s carefully thought-out instrumentation make these Passion cantatas a genuine listening feast.” This is what klassik-heute.com wrote after the release of cpo’s Vol. 1 featuring cantatas by Christoph Graupner. Vol. 2 now follows, just in time for Passiontide. Once again the instrumentation is manifold in its design, and it is here too that we find the key to Graupner’s personal style: he captivates his listeners not so much with catchy, easy-to-remember »melodies« as with intensive play with the tone colors made available to him by the court chapel members and their instruments. For example, while the Cantata for the Third Sunday in Lent exclusively employs stringed instruments, for the Cantata of the Annunciation of Mary Graupner chooses a clearly more colorful instrumentation by additionally using two transverse flutes and two oboes opposing each other as pairs in the opening chorus. The instrumentation of the Bass Aria No. 5 in the cantata exhibits special finesse. Along with the pair of transverse flutes, the first violin part is given an original design: it has tones held for an entire measure in the lowest register on the lowest string, while the two flutes insistently repeat their syncopated motion. This recording is new proof that Graupner was indeed the most independent-minded and individual and composer of the German Baroque.

Ernst Wilhelm Wolf’s contemporaries called him the “Weimar Wolf,” a fitting label, inasmuch as Weimar’s musical environment greatly influenced the life of this teacher, concertmaster, and organist who advanced to the post of chapel master to Duchess Anna Amalia, a noted patron of the arts. Even though he was a thorn in the flesh for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany’s prince of poets, he remained true to the court and his duchess over the decades. He even declined with thanks an offer from the King of Prussia, Frederick II, to succeed Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in Berlin. However, the fact that Wolf highly valued Bach’s empfindsamer Stil and the style of the Berlin chapel master Carl Heinrich Graun is clearly audible in his works. During recent years Wolf’s instrumental music has attracted increasing attention. Now Michael Alexander Willens has recorded Wolf’s oratorio Jesu, deine Passion will ich jetzt bedenken. In this work, like Graun in his Tod Jesu, the composer, who in 1756 was only a little over twenty, reflects on the Passion of Christ and relives it with deep emotion. An absolute masterpiece from the age of musical sensibility with arias of great melodic appeal that are guaranteed to leave no heart unmoved!

Roland Wilson enjoys great esteem as a trumpeter and a cornett player who performs with his own ensemble, and as a musicologist his name stands for the rediscovery of many an early music rarity. On our new recording we hear two highly interesting works that once were (and today still are) ascribed to George Frideric Handel. Johann Mattheson, who was working on the setting of the same libretto in 1723, wrote a detailed review of this Passion probably first performed in 1704 and published anonymously. Although Mattheson does not mention the “world-famous” man by name, his choice of words repeatedly offers clear references, for example, when he states that the inscription Pilate had put on the cross caused him “new business” (“neue Händel”). Mattheson doubtless knew exactly who the composer was, and everything that he describes is a perfect match for Handel. For me, there is a lot in the score that recalls the mature Handel while sounding very much like a young man who was then in quest of his individual style. The same applies to the chorale cantata “Ach Herr, mich armen Sünder,” a work certainly suggesting an even earlier date of composition. This new recording by the early music specialists of Musica Fiata and an ensemble of soloists brings this wonderful music to life with fantastic tonal homogeneity and balance, technical finesse, and historical knowledge.

The Echo Klassik prizewinner Elisaveta Blumina numbers among the outstanding female musicians of the younger generation who pursue their own paths, unaffected by any sort of “star cult.” Along with the classical piano repertoire, Elisaveta Blumina occupies herself very intensively with the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her internationally highly regarded recordings of the Soviet Jewish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg, to whose rediscovery she is tirelessly committed, are among the projects documenting this involvement. For cpo she has now recorded three sonatas by Weinberg. The clear proportions and modest length of the Sonatina op. 49 led Weinberg to rework it in 1978 in order to expand its structure, lengthen it into the Sonata op. 49, and to readjust its balance. In this sonata of classical design Weinberg further developed the spectrum of musical expression and increased the technical demands when compared to his Sonata No. 2 and the Sonatina. The Sonata op. 49 numbers among the few productions for the concert hall from this creative phase, which was reserved for intensive occupation with film music – and in particular for animated films. Emil Gilels recorded the Sonata No. 4 in 1960. Unlike the version by this dedicatee, which maintains a swift tempo, Elisaveta Blumina’s slower, more intensive playing lends greater expression to the work’s drama and grief.

Tor Aulin was primarily a violin virtuoso and the first violinist of a world-famous string quartet. He had received in-depth training from the celebrated violinist Emil Sauret in Berlin and during the 1890s was regarded as Scandinavia’s leading violin soloist. He was on close personal terms with Henri Marteau, Edvard Grieg, and Wilhelm Stenhammar, and the outstanding pianist Stenhammar often accompanied him. Aulin also made a name for himself as a composer. While his first two violin concertos are classified as exotic works even in Sweden, the third concerto composed in 1896 and thereupon published in Leipzig is something like a favorite. While composing it Aulin must have been thinking of Max Bruch’s exemplary Concerto in G minor, a work that he performed many times – and yet his own imagination and personality are recognizable in this new creation. The elegant and virtuosic work flows with a rich melodic stream of dramatic and lyrical quality, and is here performed by Ulf Wallin and the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra.

Along with Wilhelm Stenhammar and Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, Hugo Alfvén surely ranks with the leading composers of Swedish late romanticism. In the country of his birth he made a name for himself above all with his compositions inspired by Swedish folklore, one of which, Midsommarvaka, his most famous work, is heard on Vol. 1 of our new edition of his complete symphonic works. It is both astonishing and impressive that Alfvén, who previously had composed nothing more than a few piano pieces, songs, and chamber works, suddenly came forward in 1897 with a full-length symphony of some forty minutes in length. This highly regarded Symphony No. 1 exhibits very finely nuanced tone colors, and with it he immediately became known as a capable and experienced composer. Alfvén composed Drapa, a monumental, magnificent, and festive work with the subtitle “King Oscar II in memoriam,” for a gala event at the Royal College of Music and conducted its premiere on 18 October 1908. For our ambitious project we have secured the support of the German Symphony Orchestra of Berlin and Lukasz Borowicz – one of Germany’s best orchestras and one of today’s most promising young conductors.

During his lifetime Anton Urspruch was an internationally highly regarded German representative of late romanticism. After his early death, however, he unfortunately was quickly forgotten. Apart from choral orchestral compositions and two pieces for violin and orchestra, Urspruch wrote only one symphony and one piano concerto, both of which, however, met with great recognition. The Piano Concerto op. 9, composed shortly prior to the symphony and in the same key of E flat major, has astonishingly little to do with Liszt and much to do with Brahms. Although the piano part is properly virtuosic and demands eminent talent on a thoroughly Lisztian level, the ambitiously designed work is actually more a symphony for piano and orchestra. The instrumentation of his symphony is in principle of classical character and often pleasurably sonorous and also shares a certain predilection for the oboe with its model, and he too combines Beethovian texture and its frequent shifts of tempo with romantic emotion. The themes are oscillating and reflective, exhibit staying power, and intensify to dramatic upswings. A marvelous rediscovery!

After Telemann had composed the “French Cycle,” he wrote his annual cycle for 1716/17 in the Italian style, the other style then current in the music world. This style is characterized by the “konzertierendes Prinzip,” that is, by the seemingly playful and relaxed but nonetheless finely organized treatment of motifs and themes manifesting itself in the instrumental concerto but also in the great opera aria. Telemann’s cycle in which he employed the stylistic elements developed in Italy was therefore termed the “Concerten-Jahrgang” and sometimes even the “Italian Cycle.” In 1716/17 Telemann composed and performed the church compositions from Advent to the Third Day of Pentecost. The second half of the annual cycle extending from Trinity Sunday to the end of the church year followed in 1719/20. The present release brings together four compositions, two from the first half of the annual cycle and two from the subsequently composed second half. The “konzertierendes Prinzip” is developed in different ways in each piece. This performance with the Mannheimer Hofkapelle and Ex Tempore under Florian Heyerick was one of the highlights of the Telemann Festival Days in 2016.

Johann Philipp Krieger numbers among the most important Baroque composers prior to Bach. Born in Nuremberg in 1649, he was active as a chapel master at the Weißenfels court from 1680 to 1725. During his tenure as music director Weißenfels became a leading center of the early German Baroque opera. With his compositional oeuvre Krieger made important contributions to the development of the church cantata and instrumental music. Following the publication of his twelve Sonate a due Violini, CPO is now presenting the recording premiere of five of the total of twenty Sacred Concertos from his Musicalischer Seelen-Frieden, a work composed in 1690 and 1696 and presented in Weißenfels religious services. Krieger, a practicing musician with a practical mind, designed flexible parts for solo voice and two violins in this collection. He produces a close word-tone relation, and the alternations between concertizing and cantabile parts provide for vibrancy. It is especially in the “I-related” texts that inserted recitatives and accompagnati generate special emphases. For almost four decades the bass baritone Klaus Mertens has met with acclaim from the critics for his concerts and almost two hundred recordings. The interpretations of this singer whose voice is “supernaturally radiant” (klassik. com), “wonderfully trim, clearly declaiming” (mdr Firgaro), and “just as fresh as always and uncommonly homogeneous” (klassik. com) range from early music to the avant-garde.

“The two concertos are distinguished by their classical musical language rich in ideas and their colorful instrumentation. Eberl’s music radiates with a lightness similar to that of Mozart, which is why the later confusion about the authorship of their works comes as no surprise. The piano part has a glistening and brilliant sound, while the orchestra forms a richly instrumented accompaniment. The melodic invention and harmonic structure are of timeless beauty.” This is what klassik.com wrote of the Vol. 1 featuring the piano concertos of Anton Eberl. Vol. 2 with his Concerto for Two Pianos op. 45, a work highly esteemed by his contemporaries, has a stylistic design adhering to the ideals of Viennese classicism and stands out for its multifaceted instrumentation. Eberl too seemed to have had a high opinion of this work. Whenever it was possible, he performed it during his concert tours throughout Germany, for example, in Berlin with Giacomo Meyerbeer, who was not even fifteen years old at the time. The release also includes the two Sonatas for Piano Four Hands op. 7, works proving to be very demanding in their piano parts as well as in their compositional structure.

Four years after CPO issued an initial volume of David’s invigorating symphonies (Nos 1 and 6 on CPO 777 741-2 – Gary Higginson’s enthusiastic recommendation can be read here), we now get a second helping in performances that were seemingly laid down some three years before those on that disc. In contrast to death and taxes, CPO’s recording and release schedule are a mystery to us all (and a source of frustration to some). Having said that, those of us who feared for the recording of rare repertoire when CDs first emerged should simply be grateful for the stalwart work CPO actually do; who, thirty-odd years ago, could possibly have foreseen complete recorded cycles of Searle, Frankel and Wellesz symphonies, to name but three ‘Brits’ off the top of my head?

I can only reiterate my colleague’s enthusiasm for David’s symphonies. On paper, an expectation of ersatz Hindemith or Hartmann would be quite understandable. Descriptions of David’s music have often suggested dry, competent academicism – the reality seems very different. There is a clutch of stylistic allusions and comparisons one could make, but there is a great deal that is fresh, inspired and enjoyable about these works. Above all, they don’t meander; they appear to be really coherent and well-formed. This was my abiding impression of the first disc, and it applies here too. Indeed, the splendid Second Symphony on this disc lasts almost three-quarters of an hour – and I would argue that is not a moment too long.

Scored for a big orchestra, this work was completed by David in the summer of 1938 while he was holidaying in the upper Austrian highlands. It begins with a mysterious, chromatic theme played on a solo flute, before other solo woodwind instruments take on the melody and the sound and structure begin to fill out. These understated chamber-like wind textures belie what is to come. There are a lot of exposed solo lines in this work, which hint at a hibernal solitude. However, frenetic strings eventually join the fray, projecting a virility which certainly evokes Hindemith. The material evolves naturally from the original theme (indeed David embraces monothematicism throughout his symphonic corpus) and is developed most skilfully. Vibrant colours are achieved via judicious washes of tuned and untuned percussion which sporadically perforate the fuller orchestral textures. The mood of this music seems untouched by the date and place of its provenance – although it’s neither ecstatic nor joyful, it instead projects a sense of cautious optimism. One passage at 9’13 strongly evokes Hindemith’s great Harmonie der Welt symphony - David’s work pre-dates it by 13 years! As the movement heads toward its conclusion, with more adroitly played solo clarinet and bassoon, the mood briefly becomes more melancholy and terse. But this is a momentary reflection; the busy string gestures soon return and see us to the movement’s energetic, meaty conclusion which, in turn, suggests this composer’s true hero, Bruckner. Notwithstanding David’s fiercely twentieth century idiom the spirit of the Linz master is rarely far away in this music.

The two central movements, largo e cantabile and scherzo, are both relatively brief. The note quotes a contemporary critic as detecting a hint of Pfitzner’s operatic masterpiece Palestrina in the slow movement. Adopting an arch-like structure, it is an enigmatic, ambiguous essay which generates an uneasy calm. The string writing at its centre is glowingly beautiful. Rhythmically speaking the Scherzo is even more Brucknerian; here I detect something approaching bucolic joy, albeit one that’s oddly claustrophobic. The central trio section delights in strummed string effects. Some of the wind writing is almost jazzy and certainly gloriously sophisticated. The main theme soon gets under one’s skin. It ends abruptly - seemingly a David trademark.

The finale is a massive and ambitious passacaglia. I found it deeply impressive, but it requires effort on the part of the listener. It portentously reconstitutes the main theme from the first movement, initially stated in lower strings, and presents 31 superbly contrasting and interesting variations, seamlessly woven together with richly imaginative orchestration and plenty of opportunity for the principals of the ORF band to show off. There is a suppressed and not necessarily benign power at work in this compelling and measured movement. The ORF orchestra may lack the weight and sheen of their better- known Viennese counterparts but they invest this strange music with real passion and exceptional commitment. I suspect it would require a cold heart for a keen listener not to be moved by it. While I certainly found David’s Symphonies 1 and 6 to be technically accomplished and compelling, I believe this Second Symphony trumps them both. Needless to say, one cannot help but repeat the oft-asked question: where has this music been all my life?

The Symphony No 4 is harder work; it is effectively David’s ‘War’ Symphony. He made three attempts at writing it: the second draft was destroyed with his home in Leipzig during an air-raid in 1944. In fact, according to the booklet note, David rushed back into his burning house and rescued his son’s parakeets and what he thought was the almost-completed symphony. As it turned out it wasn’t – he thus reconstructed it from memory in a third and final draft which he completed in 1948. The opening dirge-like theme emerges gradually in winds and strings in the opening, brief slow movement. The brass provide more ominous colours which add to the prevailing solemnity - given the circumstances of the work’s gestation, this material seems more than apt. Gary Higginson mentioned Rubbra in his review of the earlier disc and there is again a hint of that composer’s controlled power in this movement. The pent-up energy is released in the following Allegro moderato, a terrific and compelling fugue. It builds inexorably with ripe timpani rolls and imaginative counterpoint towards a brass-dominated conclusion which again ends abruptly. Another Brucknerian Scherzo follows. The first half of this is oddly wistful and as light as air, suspended by what the note describes as “…impressionistically shimmering sonic ornaments…”. The orchestration in the middle section thickens momentarily before serene harp figurations puncture the flowing strings and winds. The movement concludes with a mercurial sense of urgency. At the outset of the fugal finale, the material heard at the opening of the work returns, somewhat shorn of any residual sentiment. It generates a somewhat muted, but not unappealing momentum. The orchestration throughout the finale is both transparent and vivid although its ending is somewhat troubled and ambiguous.

David’s Fourth Symphony then is a terse and rather compressed affair. It doesn’t disclose its qualities immediately and is the archetypal tough nut to crack. I’ve given it a few listens now and although I am beginning to like it, I feel it lacks some of the easier-going charm of its coupling here. Wildner leads the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra in searching and committed accounts of both works, although I didn’t find their efforts here quite as polished as those on their previous David disc. As mentioned, that was recorded three years later and I suspect the orchestra by then had better found their way with this composer’s distinctive idiom. The recording is faithful without being spectacular and I am happy to report that CPO’s documentation is first-class – there is a wonderfully detailed introduction to these works by Dr Bernhard A. Kohn (the keeper of the David archive) which has been translated into perfectly comprehensible English (not always the case with CPO). As with the previous volume it includes several musical examples of David’s thematic material. I hope we aren’t kept waiting too long for the next instalment in this fascinating series.

– MusicWeb International (Richard Hanlon)

Johann Sebastiani’s name no doubt will be familiar only to a few certified music experts. Born in Weimar in 1622, Sebastiani spent a good many years of his life in Königsberg, where he arrived around 1650 and later was appointed court chapel master. He composed countless occasional works as well as a St. Matthew Passion (1672) – a welcome addition to our picture of Lutheran church music and a work closing a gap in the history of Passion settings between Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach. Stephen Stubbs, Paul O’Dette, and their Boston Early Music Festival Chamber & Vocal Ensemble have fond memories of Bremen, where they have recorded in the radio broadcast hall on occasions and produced Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Baroque opera La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers, for which they won a Grammy Award in 2015. Their current release featuring Johann Sebastiani’s St. Matthew Passion pays tribute to Königsberg’s music culture and to the composer who was one of its central representatives.

Arnold Krug, a contemporary of Brahms, is almost entirely forgotten today- unjustifiably so, as is amply proved by the two pieces of chamber music on this recording. He was a familiar figure in popular concert guides until well into the 1930s. In Wilhelm Altmann’s ‘Handbuch fur Streichquartettspieler (1929), for example, we read the following words on the String Sextet by this ‘subtle Hamburg composer’: “Though Krug’s Sextet by no means stands out with particular idiosyncrasy, it can hold its own with flying colors. In point of melody and sound the most successful movement is the deeply felt Adagio tranquillo, interrupted by an urgent and dramatic interlude in which yet another Tranquillo, almost doleful and certainly imploring, has been interpolated.” Successful, fresh, exhilarating- and for more than 40 years! Thus the adjectives heaped on the Linos Ensemble, over and over again. This is more than just the result of the ensemble’s busy schedule. It is also due to the common efforts they make to renew their interpretations, and their unwavering pleasure in newly discovered scores.

Around 1600 the early Baroque solo song with instrumental accompaniment began sharing the musical stage with polyphonic Renaissance vocal works of contrapuntal stamp. Although this period was distinguished by musical forms of great diversity and variability, there was one clear premise: the immediacy of musical expression. Consequently, the person of Orpheus became one of the most important figures. He was the singer who accompanied himself on the lyre and expressed his deepest feelings textually and musically. The successful tenor Julian Prégardien teams up with the ensemble Teatro del Mondo led by Andreas Küppers, who has assisted René Jacobs and others for many years, to trace the representation and reception of this mythical singer in the seventeenth century. Accompanied by a great many instruments, the musicians cover the first operas in Italy, spend time with part songs and lute songs from England, and discover song collections from Germany. Dances and diminutions function as interludes. This is an album like a painting: Orpheus sings and plays in the midst of shepherds, nymphs, animals, trees, and stones. In 2016 Die Rheinpfalz wrote after an “Orpheus Concert”: “With Julian Prégardien and the early music ensemble Teatro del Mondo we found ourselves in the uppermost reaches of Baroque vocal and instrumental music. The sound of this formation is gentle and rough, highly expressive and emotional, and yet governed by artistic discernment.”

In 1927 the Czech composer Jaromír Weinberger celebrated a sensational success with Schwanda the Bagpiper. Then, in 1938, one year after the premiere of Wallenstein in Vienna, Weinberger had to flee from the Nazis. He did not have much success in the United States, suffered while in exile, and took his own life in 1967. Wallenstein was completely forgotten, certainly also because of the great challenges posed by its performance. Cornelius Meister, the principal conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, writes, “Along with a large chorus and orchestra, there are numerous stage musicians who are divided into three groups, even so as to include table music with a harpsichord, a large military band, and trumpets. Weinberger has a different style featured in each of the six scenes, and the absolutely indescribable manifoldness extends from the operetta, atonality, and music of folk character to romantically ramified counterpoint, so that one almost has the impression that several composers are at work.” The opera is based on Friedrich Schiller’s trilogy of the same name on the subject of the downfall of the famous General Wallenstein during the Thirty Years’ War.