Miriam Feuersinger / Capricornus Consort Basel HERZENS-LIEDER

This album of German Baroque Cantatas is entitled “Herzens-Lieder” or “Songs of the Heart.” This new release features compositions by Christoph Graupner, Johann Kuhnau, Georg Philipp Telemann, and Johann Sebastian Bach. Austrian soprano Miriam Feuersinger does a stunning job interpreting these “Songs of the Heart.” She has won several awards, including an Echo award for her 2014 recording of Graupner cantatas.

Miriam Feuersinger / Franz Vitzthum / Capricornus Consort Basel CHRISTOPH GRAUPNER Duo-Kantaten

It was Christoph Graupner who was selected as the Thomaskantor in Leipzig after Johannes Kuhnau, and it was only the fact that Graupners patron in Darmstadt did not let him go that Johann Sebastian Bach got the job! In fact Graupner was the more famous and more modern composer during those years, yet history almost forgot him for more than two centuries even having composed five times as many cantatas as Bach. An important and highly praised step in the re-discovery or Graupners music was already presented by the soprano Miriam Feuersinger and her ECHO Klassik awarded debut release on Christophorus together with the Capricornus Consort Basel. She is now joined by countertenor Franz Vitzthum for a new album of duo cantatas. This is music of great depth, with the two voices blending so well that sometimes they seem just one.

Miriam Feuersinger / Capricornus Consort Basel CHRISTOPH GRAUPNER Himmlische Stunden, selige Zeiten

The ubiquitous presence of the Bach cantatas in posthumous reception and present-day performance practice easily obscures the fact that the Central German church music of the Baroque distinguished itself through a preponderantly different appearance. Bach’s aspiration to develop all the combinatorial possibilities and his quite problematic equalisation of orchestral compactness and vocal lines rather represent a special case that, not by chance, came into con ict with new ideals of comprehensibility and definitude.

The extensive cantata oeuvre of Christoph Graupner, only parts of which have been apprehended until now, is audibly orientated towards a different goal: to promote devotion through emotional clarity, thus gratifying the connoisseur without making undue demands on amateurs. Graupner’s music aims to grab hold of the listener without losing intellectual elegance and the composure which is a courtly public’s due. His credo of the utmost possible “Simplicität”, laid down in the preface to the Darmstadt Chorale Book in 1728, must not be misunderstood, however: Graupner’s cantatas speak a comprehensible, but thoroughly elevated and markedly intellectual language. Unlike the sovereign, easily grasped Telemann and the often ingeniously plain Stölzel, Graupner prefers a refined elaboration with a hidden, deeper meaning that is not always easily accessible and audibly reckons with an informed interpreter. When we read in a 1781 Darmstadt testimonial about Graupner that he “linked art with nature, splendour with simplicity, charm with beauty” and thus “brought about ... edification and enjoyment”, then these were compliments from the eighteenth-century point of view to which a Sebastian Bach, for example, could hardly lay claim.

Miriam Feuersinger / Les Escapades HABE DEINE LUST AN DEM HERREN

The outstanding musical significance of Johann Rosenmüller, who was said to be able to merge Italian sensuality and German “gravitas” in his compositions in the most harmonious way, was already undisputed among his contemporaries. He studied in Leipzig, and quite soon the town council realized that he was a musician of an immense talent. Rosenmüller therefore received a position at the famous Leipzig Thomasschule, and was considered as the future successor of the ill Thomaskantor, Tobias Michael. His future would actually have been secured at that point if a scandal had not shaken the Leipzig music scene in the spring of 1655: Johann Rosenmüller was imprisoned due to alleged homosexual activities. But he could escape from prison and flee to Italy; he lived in Venice for 25 years before he could return to Germany. But also during the time of his exile he went on composing for German courts; Rosenmüller’s music was so highly esteemed that hardly any court orchestra in the German-speaking countries could afford to neglect his works in their repertoire selection.

The Rosenmüller sacred concertos recorded on this album are combined with equally fine compositions of less-known German contemporaries such as Johann Balthasar Erben, Augustin Pfleger, Christian Flor and others. The soprano Miriam Feuersinger is a specialist for sacred music of the German Baroque and was awarded with the famous German “Echo Klassik” in 2014 for her album with cantatas by Graupner. Nearly all the sacred concertos by Rosenmüller and his contemporaries chosen for her new CD are world premiere recordings.