Ich Aber Sage Euch

These are outstanding examples of Telemann's German style of composition, seen mostly in his chamber cantatas, which are on a par with Bach's. The orchestra of the Michaelstein Monastery Institute for Performance Practice has always specialized in the works of Telemann, and their familiarity with that repertoire serves them well; they play the stuff with confidence and grace. The four vocalists likewise are Bach-era specialists, and prove it with vigor. My only small criticism, and it's aesthetic rather than technical, is that I don't especially enjoy the sound of alto Henning Voss's voice per se. On the slower chorale-like movements, he sounds hollow to me. On the more exhuberant embellished passages, however, his superb athleticism justifies his role in the performance.

The "cornetto" played on this CD, and in Germany almost exclusively during the Baroque era, was not the North Italian cornetto in G used by Monteverdi and played brilliantly today by Bruce Dickey and Doron Sherwin of Concerto Palatino. It was the stubby cornettino in C (with D as its lowest note), a ridiculously hard critter to play with any aplomb, about the length of an alto recorder and with a mouthpiece the size of a Dutch dime. Let me hasten to say that cornettinist Arno Paduch performs miracles, playing nicely in tune and pushing a sweet timbre through his wee beastie. The particular idiom of Italian cornetto playing, with its mesmerizing rapid ornamentation and divisional improvization, was long dead by Telemann's time, of course, and the only thing that separates Paduch's cornettino from an other obbligato instrument is its timbre, trumpet-like but softer and more vocal.

Wolfgang Carl Briegel placed these very consoling words at the center of the dedication that he formulated in 1671 for his Zwölff madrigalische Trost-Gesänge for five or six voices together with basso continuo. After Briegel had served without interruption over two decades at Gotha’s ducal court, he resigned from his post as court music director and solemnly bade farewell to his employer, the local lord Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Gotha, with the publication of these twelve songs of lament.

Gottfried August Homilius, now considered the greatest cantor of Dresden's Kreuzchor, was, for a while a student of Johann Sebastian Bach. A composer of music for the church, and a great organist, he was described, in 1790, as 'one of the greatest and worthiest organists alive.' While Homilius's name is found on only one score for this passion, stylistic criteria make it almost certain that he wrote this music. This St. Matthew Passion closely resembles Bach's passions - it contains choral movements, recitatives and arias with orchestral accompaniment, and tells the story of the Passion in the same way as was done in churches all over Germany in the 18th century. However, Homilius uses many more short sections with recitative (a total of 89 pieces altogether - most less than one minute long), but his arias are generally much longer than those in Bach's passions and cantatas.

The fourth volume of our complete recording of Bach's cantatas completes the series of secular cantatas from the composer's years in Leipzig. Seven works are involved here, spanning a period from 1725 to1742, the year of Bach's final secular cantata, BWV 212. Of Bach's occasional compositions, some fifty secular pieces have survived, yet these represent no more than a fraction of what must once have existed. Bach's secular cantatas cover a period of almost exactly three decades.