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.

Throughout his life, Felix Mendelssohn harboured a strong love-hate relationship with the Berlin Sing-Akademie, where, as a singer and student of the director Carl Friedrich Zelter, he got to know important works of Italian vocal polyphony of the 16th and 17th centuries.

The Psalms of David were Schütz' first published collection 1619 after becoming the Choirmaster of the Duke of Saxony. Composed over a number of years, they blend Venetian inspired polychorality with the German of Luther's Bible translation. Throughout, particular attention is evident in the wordsetting, the meaning of the text as exemplified by the music was a driving force for Schütz throughout his creative life. Texts employed are mainly psalms or psalmselections, with a few other biblical excerpts.

Until 1750, Europe was under the spell of the Italian opera seria for about 70 years. Then the audience began to develop a taste for more drama: no more succession of arias that were loosely welded together by an overly familiar plot, but a story in which people could live with the main characters. The French, who had stubbornly refused to go along in the European mania for Italian opera seria and had developed their own national opera, could look forward to an increasing influence of French opera. This can be clearly observed in the operas of Christoph Willibald von Gluck, who has gone down in history as the great opera reformer of the 18th century. However, there were even more composers who had implemented innovations and one of them was Niccolò Jommeli (1714-74).

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.

Mozart greatly admired the music of Jommelli. Here is the latter’s marvellous version of the Dido and Aeneas story. Dorothea Röschmann is flexible and firm in the title role, and Martina Borst as Aeneas has a warm tone. The orchestra is robust and vivid, especially in the astonishing final scene which was famous in its day. We can only hope for more from this enterprising Stuttgart group.

Frieder Bernius and his Stuttgart forces weigh in with one of the finer Mozart Requiems in a very crowded field–and to ensure this performance’s relative exclusivity, it’s one of only a handful of recordings that use the edition by Franz Beyer, an intelligent and persuasive 1971 effort to correct “obvious textural errors” and some decidedly un-Mozartian features in the orchestration attributable to Franz Süssmayr, Mozart’s pupil/assistant who completed the work after the master’s death. This live concert performance from 1999 offers well-set tempos (including a vigorous Kyrie fugue), infectious rhythmic energy from both chorus and orchestra, robust, precise, musically compelling choral singing, a first rate quartet of soloists–and, especially considering its concert-performance setting, impressively detailed and vibrant sonics. The CD also features informative notes by Beyer himself.

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.