Ina Siedlaczek

Ina Siedlaczek and the Lautten Compagney present George Frideric Handel’s Nine German Arias alongside arias from his Brockes Passion. Siedlaczek’s pure and flexible voice is ideally suited to these works; her direct and natural style of singing balances the opulence of the baroque texts. The instrumental sonorities on this recording are characterised by an extraordinarily colourful sound palette both in the melody and the continuo parts: the obbligato instrumental part is taken in turn (even within the same aria) by a flute, oboe and violin and also playing together. In the aria Brich mein Herz, zerfließ in Tränen (track 3), the violin part is played by a viola da gamba, giving this piece an especially personal character.

Johann Sebastiani's name no doubt will be familiar only to a few certified music experts. Born in Weimar in 1622, Sebastiani spent a good many years of his life in Konigsberg, where he arrived around 1650 and later was appointed court chapel master. He composed countless occasional works as well as a St. Matthew Passion (1672) – a welcome addition to CPO's picture of Lutheran church music and a work closing a gap in the history of Passion settings between Heinrich Schutz and Johann Sebastian Bach. Stephen Stubbs, Paul O'Dette, and their Boston Early Music Festival Chamber & Vocal Ensemble have fond memories of Bremen, where they have recorded in the radio broadcast hall on various occasions and produced Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Baroque opera La Descente d'Orphee aux Enfers, for which they won a Grammy Award in 2015. Their current release featuring Johann Sebastiani's St. Matthew Passion pays tribute to Konigsberg's music culture and to the composer who was one of its central representatives.

Roland Wilson enjoys great esteem as a trumpeter and a cornett player who performs with his own ensemble, and as a musicologist his name stands for the rediscovery of many an early music rarity. On CPO's new recording we hear two highly interesting works that once were (and today still are) ascribed to George Frideric Handel. Johann Mattheson, who was working on the setting of the same libretto in 1723, wrote a detailed review of this Passion probably first performed in 1704 and published anonymously. Although Mattheson does not mention the 'world-famous' man by name, his choice of words repeatedly offers clear references, for example, when he states that the inscription Pilate had put on the cross caused him 'new business' ('neue Händel').