Caspar Weiberger

Johann Caspar [Kaspar] Ferdinand Fischer was a German (Bohemian) Baroque composer and Kapellmeister. Johann Nikolaus Forkel ranked Fischer as one of the best composers for keyboard of his day, however, partly due to the rarity of surviving copies of his music, his music is rarely heard today. There can be no doubt that J.C.F. Fischer belongs to the ranks of the important and influential keyboard composers of the 17th/early 18th centuries.

Born in Bohemia in 1656 Fischer’s early musical educative experiences seem to have been lost. He was at the Piarist College in Schlackenwerth and clearly travelled. But our next substantive detail is that by 1690 he was court conductor at Sachsen-Lauenburg. The complexities of the marriages, regencies and instabilities of late seventeenth century nobility are briefly alluded to in the notes but what matters, as far as Fischer is concerned, is that the bulk of his printed compositions date from the years 1690-1715.

Another recording dedicated to the music of Caspar Joseph Mertz, the court guitarist of Empress Carolina Augusta whose performances became famous throughout Austria, Hungary and Germany during the 1800s, making him one of the most sought-after musicians in 19th-century Europe. Today he is best remembered for the successful Barden-Klänge (Bardic Sounds), the focus of 94773; here we have a chance to become acquainted with a great many other works he composed for six-string guitar.

Johann Caspar Kerll & Johann Joseph Fux - Requiems - Vox Luminis, Lionel Meunier (2016) {Ricercar Official Digital Download}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44kHz - Official Digital Download (qobuz.com) -> 300 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 179 Mb | Artwork (pdf+jpg) | 5% repair rar
© 2016 Ricercar / Outhere Music | RIC 368
Classical / Baroque / Choral / Sacred Vocal Music

This recording presents two Austrian requiems of totally different character. Johann Joseph Fux wrote his Requiem in 1720 for the funeral of Eleonora von Neuburg, widow of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. Composed by a musician reputed for his theoretical skill, it impresses with the quality of the polyphonic writing combined with a very rich instrumental fabric comprising cornetts, trombones and bassoon in addition to violins, instruments also benefiting from concertante interventions.

An Opera Revival – Three Centuries Later. In 2016, almost three hundred years after the composition of Georg Caspar Schürmann's Die getreue Alceste, barockwerk hamburg presented a semi-scenic performance of this opera in the atrium of the Hamburg State and University Library. The abridged version on this CD contains the most important elements of the action as well as the musical highlights of the work. In his text the booklet author Jürgen Neubacher guides us through the action with a synopsis and explanatory inserts.

In his day Caspar Joseph Mertz (b.1806) was one of the most sought-after musicians in Europe, the court guitarist of Empress Carolina Augusta whose performances (together with his wife Josephine Plantin on piano) became famous throughout Austria, Hungary and Germany. Today he is best remembered for the successful Barden-Klänge, a cycle in which the guitar language of his time was enhanced to a stylistic expressiveness that parted sharply from contemporary works and which was more closely associated with the new, evocative aesthetics of the Romantic composers.