Theodor 2023

Georg Friedrich Kauffmann did not at all leave behind many traces documenting the course of his life. Ostramondra, his little place of birth, lay between Erfurt, where he received his education from Johann Heinrich Buttstett, who was Pachelbel’s pupil and successor, and Merseburg, where he was trained and worked for over four decades. His teacher there, Johann Friedrich Alberti, who according to Mattheson was »an excellent theologian, learned jurist, and complete musician,« had (among other things) studied with Werner Fabricius, the organist at the Church of St. Nicholas in Leipzig, before Duke Christian I of Saxony appointed him to serve as court and cathedral organist in Merseburg. Alberti’s poor physical condition following a stroke meant that he had to have his pupil substitute for him beginning in 1698.

The choral music of Galina Grigorjeva – born in Simferopol in Ukraine in 1962 and based in Tallinn, in Estonia, since 1994 – is deeply rooted in the traditions of the Orthodox Church and in ancient Russian and Slavonic folklore. Although clearly by a contemporary composer, her works have a timeless, even hypnotic, quality that seems to reach back through the ages. She has been working with the Estonian National Male Choir – one of the finest in a country full of choirs – for some years now, and some of the works here were composed or arranged specifically for this recording.