Rias Kammerchor Wolfgang Rihm Astralis & Other Choral Works

Wolfgang Rihm (born in 1952) is one of the most important European composers of the late twentieth to early twenty first centuries, but his work is little known in America. He is famous for his productivity; before his 50th birthday, he had written over 400 pieces. The four concertos recorded here are similar in their manic energy, offering few moments of repose. The expressive directions for Music for oboe and orchestra include the instructions "as if overwound," "wild and funny," and "frantic," and those phrases aptly describe the effect of his work. Rihm is an unabashed modernist, and the surface of his music may be too prickly for some listeners, but it's deeply expressive, and at times very funny, such as at the end of the oboe concerto.

The Magic Flute (German: Die Zauberflöte), K. 620, is an opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form during the time it was written that included both singing and spoken dialogue. The work premiered on 30 September 1791 at Schikaneder's theatre, the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, just two months before the composer's premature death. Still a staple of the opera repertory, its popularity was reflected by two immediate sequels, Peter Winter's Das Labyrinth oder Der Kampf mit den Elementen. Der Zauberflöte zweyter Theil (1798) and a fragmentary libretto by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe titled The Magic Flute Part Two.

Jephtha, first performed in 1752, was Handel’s last major work, written while he was struggling with poor health and failing eyesight. Yet the score contains some of his most powerful and moving music, notably the chorus’s bleak paean to blind faith, ‘How dark, O Lord, are Thy decrees!’ Jephtha is also one of his more operatic oratorios and, if many Baroque operas require the suspension of disbelief, this libretto (by Thomas Morell) may need modern listeners to suspend their distaste at the perversities of its 18th-century pietism. Handel’s wonderfully humane music cuts through all such sanctimony, however, as if – as the Handel scholar Winton Dean has argued – in highlighting the themes of personal suffering and capricious fate, Handel implicitly ‘makes Jehovah the villain of the piece’.

When Nature took on new meaning. The transition from Winckelmann to Rousseau marked one of the biggest upheavals of thought in the Enlightenment - and it is perfectly illustrated in these four Seasons with their decidedly Romantic 'descriptivism'! In this music, even though lambs frisk, fish teem and thunder booms, it is the question of Man within Nature that is the central issue. By going back to the very first version of The Seasons (with the orchestral introductions played in their entirety), René Jacobs enables us to relive that day in April 1801 that saw the triumph of old 'Papa' Haydn.

It was when the young Haydn was appointed Kapellmeister to Prince Nikolaus Esterházy that he composed his Missa Cellensis, a work of vast proportions, whose popularity is demonstrated by the many surviving copies. In this interpretation full of vivid contrasts, the RIAS Kammerchor and the Akademie für Alte Musik confirm their extraordinary ability to reveal every subtlety of a composition that possesses almost operatic energy.

After the celebrated Stabat Mater, already recorded to great acclaim by the RIAS-Kammerchor, here is Rossini’s other masterpiece in the domain of sacred music, the last of his “sins of old age”. This Petite Messe solennelle is indeed “small” in terms of the forces deployed - the instrumental accompaniment is limited to two pianos and a harmonium - but it also well deserves the adjective “solemn” for its ample scale and its formidable dramatic power. In many respects, this work may be seen as its composer’s musical testament. Dazzled, like all his critical colleagues, Filippo Filippi wrote after the first performance in March 1864: “This time, Rossini has surpassed himself, for no-one can tell what is the more impressive, his learning or his inspiration.”

This is the 6th instalment of Haenssler’s critically acclaimed survey of Rihm’s orchestral music. Wolfgang Rihm celebrates his 60th birthday this year and this release is of two very melodic concertos. The works feature the phenomenally talented siblings Jörg and Carolin Widmann.

Saul is one of Handel's most action-filled, fast-moving oratorios; an opera in everything but name only. It has been lucky on disc–both Paul McCreesh (Archiv) and John Eliot Gardiner (Philips) have led superb readings, and Joachim Carlos Martini leads a good performance on Naxos, which is a bargain. Now René Jacobs and his remarkable Concerto Köln come along and offer a truly majestic reading, filled with real drama and beautiful, precise singing and playing. Tenor Jeremy Ovenden sings Jonathan with nobility and faces down Saul in Act II with style and power. David is sung by countertenor Lawrence Zazzo, and he's as good as the best-recorded competition (Andreas Scholl, Derek Lee Ragin). Emma Bell is ravishing as Merab; Rosemary Joshua makes a fine Joshua.