Prinz von Sachsen-Weimar: The Complete Violin Concertos, Bach: Harpsichord Transcriptions

Bach, Johann Sebastian, Prinz von Sachsen-Weimar, Johann Ernst

Ensemble „Fuersten-Musik“, Schumann, Anne

CPO 777998

Brilliant Baroque Concertos by a Young Prince Our 'Thuringia Cantat' series documents the diversity of music culture in this German region with exemplary compositions illustrating what is certainly a unique music history. On the present volume we remember and call attention to a musician and composer (on the occasion of what will soon be the three hundredth anniversary of his death) who died at any early age and hardly figures at all in todays broad cultural memory: Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. His original and brilliant concertos are now being presented in complete form for the first time on cpo, complemented and contextualized by the harpsichord transcriptions of Johann Sebastian Bach based on these works. The project was designed and supervised musicologically by Prof. Dr. Manfred Fechner from Jena, whom we also have to thank for the detailed, informative, and highly readable booklet text. Although Johann Ernst died at the age of eighteen after a severe illness, we have this highly gifted prince filled with youthful musical enthusiasm to thank for the substantial support lent to the instrumental concerto, which was still rather unknown in German territories at the beginning of the eighteenth century this genre born in Italy would soon advance to the status of the epochs 'guide musical form.'

CD x 1

CPO

27.11.15

761203799824

MusicWeb International: 'Recording of the Month' (2016)