x Files Stagione

Charles Burney, the great English music traveller of the 18th century, was extremely positive about "Herr Kapellmeister Benda". His compositions his "new, masterly, and learned." Mozart, too, never made a secret of his high regard for Georg Anton Benda; he was well aware of how much he was indebted to the creator of the German Singspiel - right up to the "Magic Flute".

Michael Schneider ist mit der vorliegenden Produktion des Magnificat von Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach vor allem eine sehr geschmeidige Einspielung gelungen. Der Brückenschlag von der barocken Kontrapunkt-Strenge der Chorfugen zur frühklassischen Kantabilität der Arien gelingt stilsicher - auch die Solisten agieren mit viel Fortune.

An exact contemporary of Haydn, Franz Ignaz Beck (1734-1809) was a pupil of Stamitz in Mannheim, but lived and worked mainly in Bordeaux, where he was rated highly. Documented information about Beck is meagre and the 3-page introduction is unable to date this Stabat Mater, which is reckoned his masterpiece. It failed initially at Versailles and caused something of a furore, because of his forward looking harmonic modulations; the orchestra sabotaged his instructions for extreme dynamic contrasts. It points towards Berlioz in its originalty and I fully endorse the commentator's claim that Beck is another neglected composer whose music, once heard, demonstrates, yet again, that the accepted canon of 'great' composers, with most of the others cast into oblivion, is misleading and regrettable.

Faszinierende stilistische Fundgrube Noch immer bietet die Musikgeschichte Überraschungen und Entdeckungen, die einen bisher fast vergessenen Komponisten plötzlich in den Mittelpunkt rücken: Franz Ignaz Beck ist solch ein Fall. Die Sinfonien dieses „Berlioz des 18. Jahrhunderts“ sind dermaßen verrückt unkonventionell und kühn, dass man auch heute nur noch staunen kann über die „Modernität“ des zeitgenössischen Pariser Publikums, das ihm geradezu zu Füßen lag. Beck entpuppt sich als im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes fortschrittlicher und individueller „Stürmer und Dränger“, der die Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten seiner Zeit weit in die Zukunft öffnet. Von Mannheim aus über Italien fand Beck seinen Weg nach Marseille, wo seine Sinfonien sich zu wahren Zugstücken der berühmten Pariser "Concerts spirituels“ entwickelten und zahlreiche Druckauflagen erlebten.

Georg Philipp Telemann - cpo friends have long known - is always good for surprises. He was a diligent and also important opera composer who wrote about 35 operas for the Hamburg Opera between 1721 and 1733, of which unfortunately only nine have survived. These are, without exception, important contributions to German opera history; recent performances have all proved their viability and power, but above all the originality, the music-dramatic sense and the always attractive melody of Telemann revealed.

Charles Burney described Johann Adolf Hasse, his contemporary, as ‘the most natural, elegant and judicious composer of vocal music, as well as the most voluminous now alive…’ His output includes 63 operas, but only two are currently recorded, yet inexplicably this is the second Piramo, albeit markedly livelier and with the bonus of its two ballet suites. Schneider’s perceptive booklet note comments that too readily we find such composers immature – ‘almost like Mozart’, rather than excitingly expressive and individual. Here even the subtitle Intermezzo tragico is novel, implying a fusion of two traditions, comic and serious. The music is equally unconventional. Recitatives slip seamlessly into and out of arias, creating a strong sense of dramatic continuity.

Telemann wrote funeral compositions for many persons. His setting of the Funeral Music for Emperor Charles VII – transmitted solely in the form of a sketch in the composer’s own hand with numerous corrections and writing simplifications and in part without a text – already points to typical features of his late vocal work: a treatment of the vocal parts that is melodically sometimes austere, mostly coloratura-poor, and systematic in its employment of verbal meter, a melodic design sharpened by succinct rhythms and suspensions, and a harmonic structure enriched by pointedly set interdominants. This funerary music is set in the context of the state compositions ordered by the Hamburg city council for the elections, coronations, weddings, and deaths of Holy Roman Emperors of the German Nation.

Cinque Profeti is a little known Christmas cantata by Alessandro Scarlatti. It has a power and subtlety redolent of Handel coupled with touches of early Monteverdi. Sung here to great effect by the five soloists with sensitive instrumentalists, they play together to bring the gentle and subtle melodies - surely written to confer a sense of the special nature of the Christmas season - to life. It’s a recording which is sure to please. Opera was not performed in Rome for much of Alessandro Scarlatti's lifetime; that's why his vocal church music mostly comprised oratorios and cantatas, of which he wrote three for the Palazzo Apostolico. Only one survives: to a libretto by Silvio Stampiglia. Cinque Profeti takes the inventive form of a conversation between the five old testament prophets, Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Abraham (the cinque profeti) about the birth of Christ – which was about to be celebrated on the occasion of the cantata’s first performance, in 1705 at the Papal Palace in Rome.

Carl Friedrich Abel is one of a number of highly interesting musicians from the second half of the eighteenth century. Their works were unfortunately soon eclipsed by the fame of Viennese classics, but the German specialist label cpo has been doing a marvelous job of making some of them available again in excellent productions on period instruments. Abel was the son of a member of Johann Sebastian Bach's orchestra at Köthen; as a young man he became viola da gamba player and cellist at Dresden under Hasse; and in the turbulences of the Seven Years War he fled via France to London, where he soon teamed up with Bach's youngest son Johann Christian to organise a series of concerts which became known all over Europe. Abel played viola da gamba, cello and harpsichord at these concerts, and it appears that a good deal of music from his own compositional workshop was performed there (symphonies, flute concertos).

Joseph Martin Kraus was born in the same year as Mozart and died only one year after him; like him, he was also a musician who revealed his extraordinary talent at an early age. It is only in recent years, however, that Kraus has again begun to receive somewhat more attention as a multitalented artistic personality. Born in Miltenberg am Main, Kraus enjoyed a career that took him to Stockholm as court music director to the music-loving King Gustavus III. In their originality his sacred compositions tower above the conventional liturgical repertoire produced in Southern Germany during the second half of the eighteenth century.