Graupner: Christmas Cantatas

Das Kleine Konzert, Max, Hermann, soliści

CPO 777572

At least during the first half of the eighteenth century the court of the Landgraves of Hesse-Darmstadt was a match for the magnificence and variety of musical development in renowned music centers such Mannheim and Hamburg. The Darmstadt court orchestra must have maintained a very high musical level of excellence. For five decades the court chapel master Christoph Graupner exercised absolute rule in this musical domain. He was a universal mind and a highly inventive and original composer who unfortunately much too early fell into oblivion. We are now for the second time (the first time: Graupner CD: order no. 8359381) teaming up with Hermann Max and his baroque orchestra Das Kleine Konzert to do our part to deliver him from this fate with a recording of five of his Christmas cantatas. In his compositions, even on feast days, Graupner usually limited himself to a somewhat unusual ensemble with soprano, alto, and tenor parts (that is, without bass) – which shows that at the time Darmstadt court church music either was not or could not be performed chorally. Features of his elegant late style are already in evidence in his cantatas from the 1740s. Here a composer of the late baroque – like his friend Telemann – has set out in quest of new expressive possibilities – to our great listening pleasure!

CD x 1

CPO

30/09/2010

761203757220