Johann Adolf Hasse Six Organ Concertos

During this visit, these young ladies were so obliging as to sing me a salve regina, lately set by their father, in duo. It is an exquisite composition, full of grace, taste and propriety.” So wrote the english traveller charles burney in 1772. The “father” was Johann Adolf Hasse, one of the 18th century’s most famous composers – and here he is in “a delightful programme, thoughtfully put together and very well executed.

The two Johann Adolf Hasse compositions recorded here are proof of the both high quality of his music and the broad range of styles which he had at his disposal. Once again Hans-Christoph Rademann offers an exemplary interpretation of music from the Court of Dresden, to which he has often dedicated his musical efforts.

The small Opus 111 imprint records many of the small gems of Baroque and Classical music. Here is a disc from the fine Belgian historical-performance ensemble Il Fondamento. Johann Adolf Hasse is remembered mostly as an opera composer, but he also contributed copiously to the large corpus of now-undiscovered religious music of the middle eighteenth century. The Requiem in C major that makes up the bulk of the present disc, in particular, was widely recognized for its originality in Hasse's own time, as is attested to by the large numbers of copies of the work that have been found all over Europe.

One of the outstanding composers of his day, Johann Adolph Hasse was seen as possessing “the same qualities of true genius, taste and judgment” as his librettist Pietro Metastasio. Didone abbandonata represents the once hugely popular 18th-century genre of opera seria, exploring the same tragic story as Purcell’s earlier Dido and Aeneas while expanding the heroine’s conflicts between regal duties, love, and helplessness in the face of desertion.

At the age of 29 Hasse was on his first visit to Italy when he wrote 'La Contadina' in Naples. The music of the intermezzo, which sparkles with wit and temperament, enjoyed such a great success that a total of 38 productions in major European opera houses can be documented between 1728 and 1769. 'La Contadina' was one of the hits of the 18th century.

The Enea Baroque Orchestra, founded by the mezzo-soprano Francesca Ascioti in 2018, is currently regarded as the best Roman Baroque authority because of the high quality of its musicians. On this album the ensemble turns to Johann Adolf Hasses masterpiece, the Neapolitan Baroque opera Enea in Caonia (Aeneas in Chaonia), a genuine gem within the genre of the serenata. The libretto was inspired by Book III of Vergils Aeneid, the most famous epic poem in Latin literature. It was very fortunate that Hasse and Aeneas crossed paths in Italy, for both of them a new adoptive home, and breathed new life into this work.

Das Laudate pueri ist zwischen 1735 und 1749 für das Ospedale degl’Incurabili in Venedig entstanden. Da es sich dabei um eine musikalische Ausbildungsstätte für begabte Mädchen und junge Frauen handelt, waren die Vokalstimmen ursprünglich nur mit Frauenstimmen besetzt.

These recordings were produced in the 1980s by the Radio of the German Democratic Republic from performances given in the historic Catholic Court Church in Dresden.

One can easily appreciate this early William Christie recording with Capella Coloniensis, a group originally formed in 1954 (!) to perform baroque works in historically informed performances. Christie masters this orchestra well, and the playing is impeccable. The casting is excellent, including some of the great singers of the time: Emma Kirkby, in her prime, Agnes Mellon, Dominique Visse and David Cordier, among others. There is even a male soprano, Randall K. Wong, a rare type of singer indeed.