Vesper Music

With the flood of recordings devoted to the freethinking Salzburg Baroque composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, it is not surprising that his predecessor as Salzburg music director, Andreas Hofer, has been resurrected. There is nothing here to rival Biber's outlandish and fascinating programmatic ideas; Hofer's sacred music, as represented on this disc, falls much closer to the Venetian-derived German mainstream inherited from Schütz. That said, this is an ideal purchase for anyone who likes Schütz, Biber, or the south German Baroque in general. The album reproduces a hypothetical Vespers service of the area, featuring the music Hofer, as kapellmeister, might have drawn together for a festive event – mostly his own, but also including works by Biber, Giovanni Valentini, and Johann Baptist Dolar.

The conventional wisdom about Venetian Antonio Lotti, composer of the a cappella masterwork "Crucifixus," is that as a card-carrying member of the stil antico he represented a conservative viewpoint akin to that of his later contemporary Leonardo Leo – the fewer instruments the better, the closer to the polyphonic language of Palestrina the better. Moreover, if the "Crucifixus" was the only work of Lotti that someone became acquainted with, then he/she could not be blamed for believing this was so, although he/she might note the distinct Baroque harmonic coloring of the piece as being rather unlike that of Palestrina. Here is a challenge for you – CPO's Antonio Lotti: Vesper Psalms performed by the Sächsisches Vocalensemble and Batzdorfer Hofkapelle under Matthias Jung.

Admittedly, the name Benedikt Anton Aufschnaiter initially sounds like that of an Austrian minor master – this composer has remained virtually unknown until now, even in specialist circles. But such is far from the case with Aufschnaiter: Gunar Letzbor, who has released an entire series of impressive excavations of Austrian sacred music during recent years with his ensemble Ars Austria Antiqua, even refers to him as the 'Catholic Bach'! Both composers – Bach and Aufschnaiter – cultivate a compositional style of masterly polyphony that must have been almost ananachronim in their day but their mastery was unsurpassed. The fact that each composer arrived at completely different results may have something to do with the difference between Catholic and Protestant culture.

Alessandro Grandi - born in Venice in 1590 - was an extremely precocious talent. Appointed deputy of Monteverdi in 1627 in Saint Mark’s Basilica, he is regarded by scholars as “the greatest motet composer of his time”. After the highly praised Grandi’s motets album “Celesti fiori” (A464), Accademia d’Arcadia now presents Lætatus sum: a selection from the three extant Psalms collections. Grandi ventured in the field of Psalms with large-scale writing only at the end of his life, his collections of Psalms were undoubtedly intended for grand occasions: the relationship between soloists, tutti, and instruments is very modern, as successive portions of the text are set in sharply contrasting textures and styles. Recorded in the sumptuous Palladian church of San Francesco della Vigna in Venice, this recording features magnificent and compelling masterpieces by an author considered by his contemporaries as equal to Monteverdi in the field of sacred music.

Ned Rorem (b. 1923) is one of our most distinguished composers, perhaps best known for his songs; certainly he is one of the finest composers we have when it comes to word-setting. But this disc is given over to chamber works, and a fine disc it is; it features the British chamber group Fibonacci Series, which consists of seven instrumentalists (led by violinist Jonathan Carney, brother of the American String Quartet's second violinist, Laurie Carney).

Hans-Ola Ericsson was born in Stockholm in 1958. He is a renowned organist with hundreds of recitals and concerts behind him, as well as an esteemed pedagogue at several institutions and a bold composer of contemporary music.
Known for his renditions of music as diverse as Olivier Messiaen and John Cage, his interpretory range stretches between György Ligety and the ubiquitous Johann Sebastian Bach as well as many more. Among the crown jewels of the repertoire is the collected works of Messiaen and a recently finished series of Bach in chamber and organ settings.

Belonging to the same tradition as the celebrated Weihnachtshistorie of his teacher Schütz, these sacred concertos by Rosenmüller date from the period 1645-50, when the young composer was enjoying a rapid rise to eminence in the good city of Leipzig. Long before his enforced exile in Venice for ‘unnatural vice’, a typically Italian suavity is already clearly perceptible all through these remarkable settings of St Luke’s account of the Nativity. Cantus Cölln returns here to its favourite repertoire, eight years after a first release devoted to the same composer’s Vesper music.

Belonging to the same tradition as the celebrated Weihnachtshistorie of his teacher Schütz, these sacred concertos by Rosenmüller date from the period 1645-50, when the young composer was enjoying a rapid rise to eminence in the good city of Leipzig. Long before his enforced exile in Venice for ‘unnatural vice’, a typically Italian suavity is already clearly perceptible all through these remarkable settings of St Luke’s account of the Nativity. Cantus Cölln returns here to its favourite repertoire, eight years after a first release devoted to the same composer’s Vesper music.