Helles

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was the last great 19th century composer whose works were not completely listed. In the Mendelssohn anniversary year of 2009 this loophole has been closed thanks to the publishing of the Leipzig Edition of the works of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy by the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig. It was only in 2007/2008, as a result of research work that the musical public first gained awareness of among other pieces, 61 of a total of 115 songs composed for voice and piano. The "forgotten" songs included in this CD date from throughout the composer’s entire creative period, and demonstrate superbly the many facets, colours and richness of ideas of his musical creations.

During the more recent past, finds in libraries have made it clear that Johann Sebastian Bach held his Gotha colleague Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel in high regard. But what was it about Stölzel’s music that made Bach and some of his contemporaries so interested in it? As in the text of the famous Brockes-Passion, which was set to music by Telemann and Handel and then later by Stölzel, what is involved here is not a biblical text expanded by arias but a free poetic composition based on the Passion.While the Evangelist, like a live reporter, documents Jesus’s last hours, the “Faithful Soul” and the “Christian Church” act from the perspective of knowledge of how events will turn out. The oratorio is divided into twenty-two “Reflections” concentrating the various perspectives of the three allegorical figures on particular moments in the action. This impressive music beyond doubt will have a very individual effect on each and every hearer – as was also the case with Bach, who some years later once again took the manuscripts from his music library and used the aria of the thirteenth meditation, Dein Kreuz, o Bräutigam meiner Seele, as the basis for his own aria Bekennen will ich seinen Namen (BWV 200).

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