Baroque Bass Cantatas from Central Germany

This new CD featuring the bass baritone Klaus Mertens and the Accademia Daniel under the conductor Shalev Ad-El offers a representative sampling of baroque bass cantatas from the Kantoreiarchiv St. Johannis in the small town of Mügeln in Saxony. The Mügeln Archive contains numerous printed editions of music and manuscripts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as well as more than four hundred cantatas extant in manuscript form. The cantatas presented here are from the first half of the eighteenth century and were copied during Daniel Jacob Springsguth's years as church music director. All the composers of the cantatas – Telemann, Roemhildt, Donati, Wolff, and Kegel – were from the regions of Saxony and Thuringia. This CD's comprehensive program represents a great gain for the cantata repertoire and shows that even composers working outside the major centers could be masters of their trade. Klaus Mertens once again demonstrates »with a tonally beautiful rendering and clear articulation his outstanding position among the German singers in the field of Early Music« (klassik-heute 6 / 00 of Fasch: Cantatas).

Works:

 •Kegel: Nichts ist süßer als die Liebe
 •Wolff: Mit Fried und Freud fahr ich dahin
 •Roemhildt: Es geht kein andrer Weg zum Himmel; Meine Sonne stehet stille
 •Hoffmann: Lobt Gott ihr Christen allzugleich
 •Donati: Mein Hertzens-Hauß bereite dich
 •Telemann: Kaum ist der Heyland auf der Erden