Körnerscher Sing-Verein, Dresdner Instrumental-Concert, Peter Kopp

Music by Josef Seger, Johann Georg Schürer, Johann David Heinichen, Giovanni Alberto Ristori (world premiere recordings)

The music of the present CD convey to the listener a musical picture of the celebration of Christmas Eve which took place in the Church of the Court of Dresden in around 1750. The works recorded here all belong to the first flowering of Catholic church music at the Court of Dresden, which began in the 1720s and ended with the Seven Years War (1756–1763), which proved disastrous for Saxony. The demands of August the Strong and his son August III to display prestige led composers such as Johann David Heinichen or Giovanni Alberto Ristori to compose in a separate style for the Catholic Court Church in Dresden a wide-ranging repertoire of Catholic church music for the entire church year. In the holdings of the Sächsischen Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek there are numerous of these works which have survived as handwritten autographs. The music from the present CD is also drawn from the rich storehouse of music in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek. They lay undiscovered, hidden away in cabinets for over two centuries and with this world premiere recording they are now being present to the public for the first time.

The orchestra of the Court of Dresden was considered to be one of the most established orchestras in Europe. The Körnersche Sing-Verein Dresden and the Dresdner Instrumental-Concert, who are dedicated to presenting compositions of the 18th-century in historically accurate performances, allow the excellent quality of the music of the Court Church of this time to live again. In addition, the internationally renowned soloists draw on their wealth of experience in the performance of baroque music.