Sim Mertens

Wo wir schon bei Liedern sind: 1736 wurde im Katalog zur Frankfurter und Leipziger Ostermesse folgende Neuheit angezeigt: »Musicalisches Gesangbuch von 950 auserlesenen geistl. Liedern und Arien. Die unbekandten Melodien sind von Herrn Capellmeister Bach entweder neu verfertigt, oder nach Befinden verbessert und so dann sauber in Kupffer gestochen worden.«

40 years of creations, 61 compositions, 300 minutes of music (5 hours), 12 tracks never released before. 4 new compositions: European Grasses, for grand ensemble of 19 musicians; Novel, Wim Mertens plays the harmonium for the first time; Sprachresten, commissioned by the city of Bruges for the 500th anniversary of its famous Carillon; Under Erasure, for harps, played by Anneleen Lenaerts. 8 Wim Mertens hits revisited in live versions: Maximizing the Audience; The Belly; Lyr; Watch!; Not at Home; Humility and Bassin d’Attraction; One Breath.

"An excellent master of his craft" (M. Harras). For four decades, bass-baritone Klaus Mertens has been acclaimed by critics in concerts and nearly 200 album recordings as "unearthly radiant" (klassik com), "wonderfully slender, clearly delineating" (mdr Figaro) and "unchanged fresh and immensely homogeneous" (klassik com) for his interpretations of music ranging from early to avant-garde. Dmitri Grigoriev was born in 1979 in Leningrad and studied organ and piano after private lessons at the conservatories in St. Petersburg and Kazan, where he completed his studies in 2007 with the state concert exam. The two musicians play music from "three centuries" on this album. Cantor Dmitri Grigoriev and Klaus Mertens deliberately chose a program for this project that, on the one hand, takes into account the diverse colors and possibilities of the so special organ on site, and on the other hand, is able to provide a small but subtle insight into sounds and styles of vocal music over three centuries.

In the vinyl era, domestic Schoeck boomlets happened at intervals of a decade or more, while CD days have seen a few reissues and fewer notable new recordings. The simultaneous appearance of the Elegie and Notturno (ECM 2061) the ripest of Schoeck’s song cycles with Chris Walton’s eminently Read more Othmar Schoeck: Life and Works (University of Rochester Press, 2009), raises the possibility of the composer becoming a vibrant presence. Good luck. The current production illustrates why viable work too often gets lost in the shuffle.

Mit seinen Vier und zwanzig theils ernsthaften, theils scherzenden Oden reagierte Telemann 1741 auf die ein Jahr zuvor erschienene Sammlung des Bach-Schülers Lorenz Christoph Mizler, die einige Satzfehler aufwiesen und auch sonst nicht alle Kriterien, an denen man Odenvertonungen messen sollte, erfüllen konnten. Wie schwierig es ist, einfach, aber gehaltvoll zu komponieren, musste allerdings auch Telemann erfahren, der in seiner Vorrede bekennt, dass er die Arbeit nur „mit sehr viel Schweisse“ zuwege gebracht habe. Erhöht wurde die Schwierigkeit durch die Aufgabe, daß die Melodie zu allen Strophen passen soll.

The five cantatas presented on this disc share several elements. They are all for solo bass and orchestra, and Der am Ölberg zagende Jesus deals with Christ’s agonies in the garden of Gethsemane, with three recitatives setting the scene surrounding two arias for Jesus, ending with an aria by the narrator inviting all to contemplate Christ’s sacrifice. Jesus liegt in letzten Zügen is a meditation on the moment of Christ’s death. Ich will den Kreuzweg gerne gehen expresses the narrator’s desire to follow the way of the cross in Christ’s footsteps. The other two cantatas are more tangentially connected to the events of the passion, although they mention the passion as motivation for the sinner to prepare for eventual union with his Savior.