Classical Music

In addition to orchestral works and chamber music, the Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck devoted himself mainly to vocal music. Besides eight operas, he composed more than 400 songs in which, in contrast to Reger or Strauss, for example, he set to music the important German lyric poets such as Goethe, Eichendorff, Heine, Uhland, Mörike or Hesse, striking his own characteristic note for each. At first he composed individual songs, which he put together into groups of works depending on the poet, vocal register or period of origin; he later created extensive song cycles with piano, instrumental and orchestral accompaniment. Schoeck composed songs all his life and is rightly regarded as one of the most important song composers of the 20th century. For him, for whom poetry was living reality, the message of a poem had to correspond with his own attitude to life and world view in order to achieve a harmony between poetry and music. His compositional radius ranges from the simple folksong-like melody (“Die Kapelle” op. 3/2) to the chromatically exuberant eruption (“Rastlose Liebe” op. 19a/5), without ever losing touch with tonality. The songs recorded on this release span the period from the first attempts of a precocious youth (“Nachtgesang” oO No. 2, 1900) to the mature Eichendorff songs op. 30 of 1918, some of them in world premiere recordings. In Eichendorff’s Wanderlied op. 12/2, the two bass baritones Benedikt Boll and André Sesgör from Clemens Morgenthaler’s singing class at the Feldkirch University of Music are featured as the “Prague students”.

It is a well-known story: The hero Hercules (Greek: Herakles) is walking in the Cithaeron mountains when he suddenly encounters two female figures at a fork in the path, Voluptas (Pleasure) and Virtus (Virtue). Both attempt to win the young demigod for themselves. At the end of their courtship, Hercules joins with virtue and dedicates himself to her ideals. The virtue aspect of this story from ancient mythology also made it a popular subject in the Christian world. In this way, on 5 September 1733 in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach performed his Dramma per musica “Lasst uns sorgen, lasst uns wachen” BWV 213 for the eleventh birthday of the Saxon crown prince Friedrich Christian with his Collegium musicum. In summer 1750, 17 years after Bach and directly before his last trip to Germany, George Frideric Handel worked with the subject in London – the result being “The Choice of Hercules” HWV 69.Handel and Bach were born around four weeks apart and 150 km apart from one another in distance, but they never encountered one another in person. By linking both “Hercules” works to a pasticcio (pastiche), we have now created a virtual encounter between the two composers for today’s listeners. The pasticcio practice was a popular method in Bach and Handel’s time, particularly in opera, to bring together various pieces of music, preferably also from several composers, to create a new work. The fact that several languages were sung during a performance did not undermine its effect and popularity. In Clemens Flämig’s “Hercules” pasticcio too, there are English texts alongside German ones. The result can be heard on the double album at hand which was released within the series “haendeliana hallensis”.

Hardly any gambist was as famous in the middle of the 17th century as William Young. Emperors and kings held him in high esteem. His contemporaries celebrated him as the new Orpheus, and even decades after his death, he was still considered one of the best gambists that Europe had ever had. And few gambists were so thoroughly forgotten as William Young, despite his extensive, extraordinary, and stylistically extremely diverse oeuvre. This discrepancy alone was reason enough for gambist Juliane Laake and her ensemble Art d’Echo to focus all attention and dedication on Young‘s work. It quickly became apparent that Young who seemingly came out of nowhere when he became employed at the Archduke’s Court in Innsbruck in 1652 – neither his year of birth nor any other facts of his earlier life are known – was a wayfarer between the worlds and times. His compositions were refreshingly casual and played with the different musical styles and trends of his time: a wonderfully unconventional and still largely unacknowledged field of experimentation, a musical world of its own that is off the beaten track and is difficult to classify in the usual categories. The album at hand contains a cross section of Young’s work, taken from his only known sheet music print or from manuscripts from all over Europe. Several of the compositions are recorded for the very first time here.

WUNDERHORN-LIEDER ? ES SUNGEN

Carl Loewe and the organ – this combination may astonish many music lovers today since Loewe is known almost exclusively as the master of the ballad. For several decades now, however, musicians and musicologists have endeavored in a variety of ways to examine the breadth of Loewe’s work and influence. Organ, organ playing, and organ music have not left many visible and audible traces in his oeuvre although he already started to play the organ in his childhood and was recognized as an excellent organist in his long-standing tenure as Music Director of the town Stettin and Cantor and Organist at St. Jacob’s Church there. The present recording – initiated by the International Carl Loewe Society – includes, in addition to several original organ works, arrangements of piano music, ballads, and choral movements from oratorios. The organ in the town church St. Petri in Löbejün, Loewe’s native town, was built in 1901 by the renowned organ builder Wilhelm Rühlmann from Zörbig (Opus 228). It stands on the west gallery and is designed as a pneumatic organ with 22 stops on two manuals and a pedal. It is the successor of the organ built by David Beck in 1591, where Carl Loewe received his first organ lessons from his father. The Rühlmann Organ with its warm, fundamental sound and its orientation towards the late romantic sound ideal would have been a feast for the ears of the romantic Carl Loewe. The organist on the release at hand is Irénée Peyrot, Cantor and Organist at the Market Church in Halle, not far away from Löbejün. He also was responsible for the organ arrangements of the other Loewe works.

During the last two decades, several releases with works by the composer Eberhard Böttcher have been released on querstand label. The program of the most recent album “Canticum Novum” opens with the Latin Mass for Choir and Organ. “Missa Reservata” is a term from the 15th century that describes a special kind of expressive vocal polyphony. The six traditional parts of the mass, Kyrie – Gloria – Credo – Sanctus – Benedictus – Agnus Dei, are contrasted according to their respective content and are rendered with personal expression.Following this is the soloistic part of the program, featuring the “Vier Festtagschoräle” (Four Festival Chorales) as well as the “Zwei geistliche Gesänge” (Two Sacred Songs) based on texts by Reinhild Traitler and Heinrich Heine, all set for soprano, horn, and organ. The individually interpreted pieces “Maria und der Engel” (Mary and the Angel) and “Die Heiligen Drei Könige” (The Three Holy Kings) are punctuated by the choral movement “Vom Himmel hoch” (From Heaven Above).The final part of the program – again set for choir and organ – includes two motets: “Pater noster” (Our Father) and “Befiehl dem Herrn deine Wege” (Commit thy way unto the Lord) based on Psalm 37 of the Bible. In between are two traditional chorale movements: “Ein feste Burg” (A mighty fortress) and “Ach bleib mit deiner Gnade” (Abide, O dearest Jesus) both in new musical settings.Using a consistently new tonal structure, the Berlin-born composer who now lives in Norway has tried to give the old texts and pieces a musical expression that unites the works on this recording.

Herbert Blomstedt's 2012 performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Miss Solemnis in D major bursts with energy and excitement, and even though it may seem somewhat removed from more traditional, reverent versions, it still befits the religious sentiments of the composer. As one can deduce from contemporaneous concert performances of the Kyrie, Credo, and Agnus Dei, Beethoven had no problem with a secular treatment of his great mass, and he would have welcomed the vitality and passion that Blomstedt, the MDR Radio Choir, and the Gewandhaus Orchestra bring to the score, without any contrived sense of piety or dogmatic stodginess. Beethoven's concepts of God and religion were close to 18th century Deist ideas, so it's likely he conceived the Missa Solemnis in much the same manner as he did his Symphony No. 9, as a humanist document that addressed the hopes and ideals of humanity, instead of the liturgical needs of the Catholic Church. The liner notes go into great detail about Beethoven's views, so this recording may be understood in that context, but listeners may decide for themselves whether or not Blomstedt gets the theology right. In musical terms, he certainly grasps the power and vitality of the Missa Solemnis and delivers a compelling and thoroughly convincing reading of the work.

-- All Music Guide

Johann Sebastian Bach was only known to have travelled north. His meetings with the organists and composers Georg Böhm (Lüneburg) and Johann Adam Reinken (Hamburg) must have left a lasting mark on him. When he stayed in Lübeck to study the organ art of Dietrich Buxtehude, he of course wanted to visit the organs in the town churches as well, and so we can take it for sure that he also got to know the instruments at St. Jakobi.What was it about Northern German music that fascinated Bach? In contrast to his Thuringian home, Hamburg, Lübeck and many other cities in the north of Germany developed a culture of organ music. In toccatas and preludes, a stylus phantasticus unfolded, and the organ builders Scherer, Stellwagen and Schnitger with their pedal works created the opportunity to lend the bass fundamental its own splendid sound. Also, in the genre of organ chorales, Franz Tunder and Dietrich Buxtehude from Lübeck had developed new expansive forms leading to long chorale fantasies – a special source of inspiration for Bach. The release at hand offers a collection of Bach’s organ works with influences from Northern Germany. Arvid Gast plays both historical organs at St. Jakobi Lübeck: the three-manual Stellwagen Organ built in 1637 and the four-manual Great Organ where in the current disposition many historical stops from the 16th and 17th centuries are included.

Johann Sebastian Bach apparently began composing Latin masses relatively late. Until the beginning of the 1730s, he seems to have performed almost exclusively foreign settings of the Mass ordinary. Of the “many masses” he is said to have created according to his obituary from 1750, only five have been handed down and it remains uncertain which of these works were intended for performance in Leipzig or for foreign clients. This applies in particular to the Mass in B minor. The mass was completed between August 1748 and autumn 1749, perhaps early 1750. Whether the completed Mass was ever performed before Bach’s death is beyond our knowledge. The generation of Bach’s sons and disciples likely only gradually became aware of the uniqueness of the work. The album at hand was recorded in Merseburg Cathedral and celebrates both the 20th anniversary of Merseburger Hofmusik (led by Merseburg Cathedral Organist and Leipzig Gewandhaus Organist Michael Schonheit) and the 25th anniversary of Collegium Vocale Leipzig.