Otto Klemper

Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion is widely recognised as one of the greatest masterpieces in Western sacred music. With its double orchestra and chorus this is a work of enormous proportions in every sense, and Bach was extremely resourceful in treading a fine line between creating the almost operatic spectacle valued by the secular authorities in Leipzig, and the elevated religious atmosphere sought by the clergy. This inspired mix of moving drama and theological discourse led Leonard Bernstein to declare that ‘there is nothing like it in all of music’.

Otto Klemperer's Mahler is invariably dry-eyed, yet urgent, a valuable corrective to the number of latter-day interpreters who would either self-indulgently wallow in the music's sentiment or, even worse, treat it as pure sonic architecture, as though it were pre-Schoenberg. If this 1967 reading of the Ninth sounds slightly detached by modern standards, if its expressive points seem slightly understated, it is nevertheless deeply engaged and masterfully controlled. Klemperer was beginning to slow down by this point in his career, and the tempos are just a hair on the slow side, especially in the two middle movements. But the old firmness of conception and rocklike steadiness are still there, even in the stormy weather of the Rondo-Burleske.

J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio was written for the Christmas season of 1734, and although it incorporates music from earlier works it belongs firmly among his timeless large-scale compositions. The development of the oratorio, which was to become a new musical form in Protestant church services at that time, was stimulated by Bach’s compositions, particularly by the unusual form of his six-part Christmas Oratorio. From its famously joyful opening ‘Jauchzet frohlocket’ to the arrival of the Wise Men from the East, this work’s enduring popularity has long proven its status as a choral ‘evergreen.’

Twice GRAMMY-nominated composer and performer Derek Bermel studied with Henri Dutilleux, Dutch avant-gardist Louis Andriessen, and ragtime revivalist William Bolcom. In his music, seemingly antithetical qualities – classical and vernacular, comic and serious – merge and transform each other unpredictably, their inspiration ranging from theatre (Ritornello), to gestalt psychology (Figure and Ground), to meditations on cosmology (A Short History of the Universe). Thracian Sketches explores and reimagines Bulgarian folk music, while the Violin Etudes distill Bermel’s intellectual creativity into its purest form.

It is remarkable that Theodora, this gem of an Oratorio, whose musical quality Handel himself considered to be particularly outstanding, seems to be largely unknown to professional musicians and the expert audience. This is even more astonishing as this masterpiece (in the versions of its first performance lasting nearly three hours) is definitely an absolute highlight of Handel’s creative work, not least because of its splendidly differentiated orchestration and the psychologically sensitive presentation of its protagonists.

A collection of musical gems by great contemporary composers of the minimalist and postminimalist trend. Music of Steve Reich (Vermont Counterpoint, New York Counterpoint - first recording of the saxophone version), Arvo Pärt (Pari Intervallo), Hans Otte (Eins), Ludovico Einaudi (Quattro Passi), Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (For you Ann Lill, Op.58), skilfully interpreted by Andrea Ceccomori and Goffredo Degli Esposti on the flutes, Paul Wehage on the saxophones, Cecilia Chailly on harp and Fabrizio Ottaviucci on piano.

In its scale and gravitas, Otto Klemperer’s interpretation of the St Matthew Passion draws on the Bach performance style that developed in the 19th century; but its clarity, its underlying energy, and its superb array of soloists – singers with impeccable operatic credentials – also ensure that full justice is done to the drama of Bach’s sublime retelling of the Gospel story.