Analog Algorithm Christoph

Christoph Croise turns to the rich Romantic works of his 19th-century Swiss compatriot Joachim Raff, breathing new life into the composer's complete works for cello and piano.

Finnish Baroque Orchestra’s second release of Christoph Graupner’s (1683–1760) music continues to reveal delightful masterpieces by the Baroquemaster, who November 2014 during his lifetime was even more well known than his colleague Johann Sebastian Bach. After the acclaimed release of Graupner’s orchestral works (ODE12202; The Finnish broadcasting company YLE Record of the Year 2013), this new album focuses on some of the chamber works by Graupner – the Trio Sonatas. Graupner was extremely productive as a composer, with a catalogue of over 2’000 works varying from orchestral works to cantatas, concertos and chamber music. He also possessed a unique personal style of writing music and often favoured certain rarer instruments in his works. Among these are the viola d’amore as well as the chalumeau, both instruments being heard also on this disc. From his contemporaries Graupner’s music stands out with its exceptional command of melody and harmony.

Sinuously beautiful solo motets by a little-known contemporary of Cavalli, imaginatively programmed with instrumental interludes by their Italian contemporaries.

It is not always easy to avoid writing a shade smugly about the arrangements Mozart made of choral works by Handel. Nowadays, increasingly, we try to listen to such works as Acis and Galatea and the Cecilian Ode in the form in which Handel composed them; to hear them through the prism of the classical musical consciousness is disconcerting. For once we feel that we know better than Mozart. Well, so we do, about Handel and the way he makes the best effect (at least on us); but a different kind of historical awareness is needed here, one that puts us into the frame of mind of late eighteenth-century Vienna and its perception of Handel.

A famous cantata for baritone by Johann Sebastian Bach (“Kreuzstabkantate”), combined with two cantatas by Georg Philipp Telemann. In addition and as a supplementary musical colour there are three purely instrumental pieces: overtures by J. F. Fasch and Telemann, and as an “encore”, the Larghetto from Handel’s Concerto Grosso Op. 6/4.