REVIEW:

After the already magnificent 5 CD release of the label Capriccio with religious choral music by Telemann (C7215), the label continues with the recording of impressive cantatas and oratorios by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach conducted by Hermann Max. For three decades, Hermann Max has made a very important contribution to historical performance practice.

Highlights in the box are the Magnificat and “Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu”. Although there is no conclusive evidence, it seems likely that in the summer of 1749 Bach composed his Magnificat as a calling card, with a view to succeeding his ill father as Thomaskantor in Leipzig. He went to the post after the death of Johann Sebastian in 1750, and again in 1755, but without success. Three decades later, as music director in Hamburg, Philipp Emanuel revised his Magnificat for a performance in 1779, adding trumpets and timpani, expanding horn parts and composing a new “Et misericordia”.

This recording follows the revised version but retains the poignant “Et misericordia” from the 1749 version. On one level, Emanuel's masterpiece pays homage to his father's Magnificat, in the euphoria of the radiant opening, the muscular arpeggio motif illustrating “Fecit potentiam”, and the almost literal quote on “Deposuit potentes”, for which he, like his father, composed a torrent of tumbling scales. In the gigantic, last movement, starting as an old-style fugue on “Sicut erat in principio”, but expanding into a majestic double fugue with a new counter subject to the word “Amen”, Emanuel unfolded, just like his father, his handsome, contrapuntal mastery.

– Stretto