Our album presents a selection of five works from the extensive, largely unexplored Easter Cantata oeuvre created by Georg Philipp Telemann during the course of his sixty years in Eisenach (1708-12), Frankfurt am Main (1712-21), and Hamburg (1721-67). Four of the works recorded here date from the 1720s and take us back to the years in Telemann’s creative life as a composer when he was the new music director of Hamburg’s five principal churches and was reorganizing the city’s church music and modernizing it in musical respects. The two cantatas from the “Annual Cycle without Recitatives” refrain from use of larger ensembles with brass and woodwind instruments and concertizing instrumental voices; the focus is on the arias and quotations from the Bible, and of these it is above all the opening dictum that is very extensive and often elaborated with rich counterpoint. On the whole, the annual cycle has an intimate, subdued character. Its music does not score points with tonal effects; instead, it generates appeal with refinements in the musical setting of the texts. The cantatas of the “Second Lingen Annual Cycle” are characterized by a fixed sequence of movement forms. The initial sinfonia is followed by an accompagnato recitative, and this weighty exordium is succeeded by two duets in alternation with chorale strophes. The duets are da capo arias and designed in such a way that one voice sings the A part, while the other voice sings the B part.

REVIEW:

Telemann has an almost inexhaustible facility for good melodies, piquant harmony, and a colorful yet discrete orchestration. To pull this off requires considerable focus and attention by the performers, and here Michael Willens knows his stuff. The tempos are all carefully chosen, the phrasing precise, and the sound clear. Soprano Johanna Winkel, who doesn’t have a great deal to do, has a clear and rather lyrical voice, while alto Margot Oitzinger is richer but not too dark in terms of tone. The real vocal work is done by Georg Poplutz, no stranger to this style of music or the composer, but the hero seems to be bass Peter Kooij, whose rich tone and vocal dexterity are evident from the start. In short, these are terrific works, varied and yet copacetic with each other, and the excellent performance of the Kölner Akademie produces a disc that should win kudos, even from jaded Telemann enthusiasts.

-- Fanfare