Frieder Bernius

With its highly complex and artful opening chorus, the cantata Ein feste Burg is one of the highlights among Bach's cantatas. With the Kammerchor Stuttgart under Frieder Bernius and the soloists Sarah Wegener, David Allsopp, Thomas Hobbs and Peter Harvey, this masterpiece finds a more than adequate recording here. The cantata is supplemented by the Missa brevis in G minor, BWV 235, one of the four Lutheran masses Bach composed at the end of the 1730s.

There can be no doubt - the Missa in C minor KV 427 by W.A.Mozart is a fascinating work. Simply calling it a "mass" is inaccurate; indeed, there is hardly more than a musical torso full of enigmas and problems - and brimming with magnificent music.

Christoph Willibald Gluck - Orfeo ed Euridice (Vienna Version-1762)
Nancy Argenta / Michael Chance / Kammerchor Stuttgart / Tafelmusik / Frieder Bernius
2xCD | EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 362 MB | Artwork: 38 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Sony Classical # SX2K 48 040 | Country/Year: Germany 1992
Genre: Classical | Style: Opera, Viennese School

Frieder Bernius began his career primarily as a conductor of choral music, focusing largely on repertory from the Baroque and early Classical periods. Gradually he took a greater interest in orchestral music while still maintaining a preference for choral works. He has favored authentic performance practices and has become one of the leaders in the historically informed performance (HIP) movement. (…) Bernius began recording with Sony Classical in 1989, and among his most successful early recordings for that label was that of Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1992), with Nancy Argenta and Michael Chance. Along with his successes in the recording studio in the 1990s and first decade of the new century, Bernius continued to lead many highly acclaimed concerts at home and abroad with his three Stuttgart ensembles.

Jan Dismas Zelenka (16 October 1679, Louňovice pod Blaníkem, Bohemia - 23 December 1745, Dresden, Saxony), baptised Jan Lukáš Zelenka and previously also known as Johann Dismas Zelenka, was the most important Czech Baroque composer, whose music was notably daring with outstanding harmonic invention and mastery of counterpoint.

Joseph Haydns Stabat Mater, written in 1767, was the first church work the composer wrote after entering the service of Prince Esterhazy in Eisenstadt. Unlike almost all his other sacred works, it soon circulated in numerous copies and established Haydns reputation as the leading vocal composer of his day. This recording under the direction of Frieder Bernius - joined by a distinguished line-up of soloists, the Kammerchor Stuttgart and the Hofkapelle Stuttgart - follows the new critical edition of the work by Carus. The Kammerchor Stuttgart ranks as one of the best ensembles of its kind.

The Kammerchor Stuttgart, under the direction of Frieder Bernius is one of the finest choirs worldwide. Their many prizewinning recordings have set a standard. Now Frieder Bernius presents Beethoven's "Missa in C major" (op. 86). With its tonal language of subjective avowal, the first of Beethoven's two masses opens up new worlds of expression which are expressly modern and point towards the future. Not to be considered a preliminary work to the Missa solemnis, it is an entirely independent work which set standards for the further development of settings of the Mass in the 19th century. The world premiere recording of Luigi Cherubini's "Sciant gentes" (1829) rounds out this CD.

In this Carus release, Frieder Bernius leads soloists from Kammerchor Stuttgart in a selection of transcriptions by Clytus Gottwald and original compositions for chorus subdivided into multiple parts, in this case, up to 16 parts. The arrangements, here of songs originally for solo voice and piano, demonstrate Gottwald's mastery of this niche genre; he has also made remarkably effective choral transcriptions of chamber music and work for full orchestra. The arrangements, of songs by Ravel, Debussy, and Schumann, work beautifully as choral music, even as independent compositions, considered apart from their sources.

This disc is an amazing example of the hubris of a major classical label at the height of its imperial aspirations. Imagine the Columbia Records of the '60s releasing a record of Bruckner's Mass in E minor. Imagine the Sony of the new millennium releasing a disc by a provincial German chorus and an unknown conductor. Now be grateful that in 1991 that Sony, at the height of its aspirations, saw fit to record a splendid provincial German chorus and a brilliant unknown conductor in a magnificent recording of Bruckner's tremendous Mass in E minor. How else would there come to exist so wonderful a performance as this one by Frieder Bernius leading the Kammerchor Stuttgart and the Deutsche Blaserphilharmonie? The sound of the Stuttgart choir is pure, strong, and ardent.