_ Die Auferstehung Und Himmelfahrt Jes

Radical, daring and extremely refined: that’s how Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach saw his new path for the Oratorio, after his father’s Passions had marked the climax of the baroque era. Encouraged by his godfather Telemann and liberated from the yoke of the capricious Frederick of Prussia, he found himself in Hamburg with an audience hungry for new music. And he brought them his oratorios, no longer in churches but in concert halls, where he demanded the listener’s undivided attention for sudden changes of mood and colour.

Although frequently classified as an oratorio, C. P. E. Bach's Auferstehung und Himmeelfahrt Jesu is really a cantata. There are no named dramatis personae and it is evident from Emanuel Bach's own comments that he intended the work to have a partly didactic function. He also considered it, in his own words as "pre-eminent among all my vocal works in expression and in the composition". The author of the text was Karl Wilhelm Ramler, an important poet of the German Enlightenment whose texts had earlier attracted Telemann. Ramler and Bach engaged in a close collaboration over the Auferstehung and between Bach's setting of it in 1774 and the eventual publication by Breitkopf in 1787, composer and poet entered into a lively correspondence concerning the details and shape of the cantata. The first performance took place in Hamburg in 1778 when it was warmly received. Many subsequent performances were given culminating in three directed by Mozart in Vienna.

The death of Georg Philipp Telemann in 1767 paved the way for his godson, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach to take up the position of Director of Music in Hamburg. Prior to that C P E Bach had been working for Frederick the Second of Prussia in Berlin but longed for a greater musical freedom and stylistic flexibility that working in Hamburg would offer him. This included the composition of three oratorios, including the one presented here. C P E Bach worked on The Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus in collaboration with the librettist Karl Wilhelm Ramler from 1781, and in 1787 it was published by Breitkopf. A letter from the composer to his publisher subsequently revealed he considered it to be one of his greatest masterpieces—a reflection agreed upon by audiences at the time, and succeeding generations of composers, including Haydn and Beethoven who both drew inspiration from it.

Hermann Max betont mit seinem vorzüglichen Ensemble die dominante Seite der Musik mit einem kammermusikalisch sensiblen Klangbild von hoher Transparenz und Plastizität. Ebenso klar und präzise musizieren auch die hervorragenden Vokalsolisten.

Georg Philipp Telemann's late work is almost inexhaustible in terms of surprises. How many times have I written this and yet I am not yet embarrassed to proclaim it again. With which creative power the 80 year old opens new worlds of expression at the end of the 18th century, one can only be astonished by his last oratorios. One of the very last - from 1761 - is his Easter oratorio "Die Auferstehung" (not to be confused with the "Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu", 1760). There is no longer a rigid sequence of recitatives and arias: flexible, almost through-composed, the music follows the strong affects of the (excellent) libretto, always in search of unconventional means of expression, such as a dramatic accompaniment, accompanied only by a highly virtuosic solo violin becomes. Or the beginning of the words: "Du tiefe, tote, grauenvolle Stille" …

The story of the liberation of the Israelites from their enslavement in Egypt, as told in the Book of Exodus, has often been set to music. The works by Telemann and Rolle recorded here are based on this subject and partly even on the same libretto. And yet these two composers, separated by only one generation, handle this topic in remarkably different ways.

Marking the 300th anniversary of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach’s birth in 1714, this 13-CD box at budget price presents a survey of his greatest works, performed by some of the most renowned musicians in the world of historically informed performance. Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach (1714-1788), the second son of JS Bach, was a celebrated figure in his lifetime and is recognised as a crucial figure in the transition from the Baroque to the Classical styles. Mozart, no less, said of him: "He is the father, we are the children.”