Reinhard Keiser

We tend to think of Johann Mattheson (1681–1764) as a theorist first and foremost, and as a composer almost as an afterthought. To be sure, he competed in a world in Hamburg that at one time or another featured Reinhard Keiser, Georg Philipp Telemann, and George Frederick Handel; indeed, all of these were friends, sometimes rivals, and in one case, he and Handel even fought a duel over an opera, Cleopatra (Mattheson would have won, but a metal coat button deflected his sword, fortunately both for posterity and Handel). As a singer, he was well regarded, but by 1705 he had traded his performance chops for a real job as private secretary to the English ambassador.

Christoph Graupner gehört sicher nicht zu den allgemein geläufigen Komponisten des Barock. 1683 im sächsischen Kirchberg geboren, trat Graupner erstmals in Hamburg als Komponist in Erscheinung. Dort entstanden einige Opern, zum Teil in Zusammenarbeit mit Reinhard Keiser, zum Teil als eigene Werke. 1709 erfolgte der Ruf an den Hof Ernst Ludwigs, Landgraf von Hessen-Darmstadt, an dem Graupner bis zu seinem Tod im Jahre 1760 blieb.

Most of us come to the Saint John Passion knowing the Saint Matthew Passion first. The bigger and more elaborate Saint Matthew, which came along three, or possibly five years later (there is controversy about the date), has tended to cast a shadow in which the earlier work is swallowed up, and this has been so ever since Mendelssohn's Saint Matthew performance in 1829 marked the beginning of the public rediscovery of J.S. Bach. (The professionals had never forgotten.) But if the Saint John is smaller in scale than the Saint Matthew, it is hardly the lesser work in quality, though it would of course be silly to claim that the master of the Saint Matthew Passion had not learned from the experience of setting Saint John. But the most interesting differences between these two towering attestations of faith are differences in intention. Read Matthew 26-27, Mark 14-15, Luke 22-23, and John 18-19, and you get four tellings of the last days in the life of Jesus that differ in tone, emphasis, and detail…

Although he cultivated most of the vocal and instrumental genres of his time, Georg Friedrich Händel’s true calling always was the opera. Indeed, most of his professional life was devoted to writing and performing operas. As a youth, he was already a member of the Hamburg opera orchestra, writing some operas in the eclectic style of Reinhard Keiser, blending Italian da Capo arias, German recitatives and French-style dances. In order to keep up with Italian music - which was then a synonym of fashionable music - Händel traveled to Italy in 1706, where he composed numerous chamber cantatas and religious music in Latin. In late 1707 he wrote his first Italian opera, Rodrigo, which premiered in Florence, and at the end of 1709 Agrippina was performed in Venice, showcasing his brilliant assimilation of the Italian style. After this opera’s success, Händel accepted the invitation to travel to London, where the taste for Italian opera was just beginning thanks to some pasticcios and a version of Camilla by Giovanni Bononcini, which was extraordinarily successful.

Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello (also Bressonelli; ca. 1690, Bologna – 4 October 1758, Stuttgart) was an Italian Baroque composer and violinist. His name is mentioned for the first time in a document from 1715 in which the Maximilian II Emanuel appointed him violinist in his court orchestra in Munich. Soon after, in 1716, after the death of Johann Christoph Pez, he got the job of music director and as a maître des concerts de la chambre at the Württemberg court in Stuttgart. In 1717, he was appointed Hofkapellmeister.

Barthold Heinrich Brockes wrote a libretto on the Passion of Christ – based on the account in Matthew’s Gospel – which was set to music by many composers of his time, including Reinhard Keiser, Georg Philip Telemann and George Frideric Handel. It is Handel’s version of the latter that the period-instrument ensemble Arcangelo has chosen to present here. Under the direction of Jonathan Cohen, these specialists in the Baroque repertory are joined by the voices of Sandrine Piau, whose numerous Handel recordings are regarded as a benchmark, the tenor Stuart Jackson and the baritone Konstantin Krimmel, recently revealed in a debut recital for Alpha.