Graun: Easter Oratorio

Kölner Akademie, soliści, Willens, Michael Alexander

CPO 777794

The success story of the passion cantata Der Tod Jesu is without its equal in the music history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and gradually obscured the rest of the composer Carl Heinrich Graun’s extensive vocal and instrumental oeuvre. His Easter Oratorio, which cpo is now releasing as a recording premiere in an interpretation on historical instruments by the Kölner Akademie under the conductor Michael Alexander Willens, unfortunately suffered the same fate. The music is extremely imaginative and festive and displays a musical affinity to Bach’s cantata oeuvre. Each of the four cantatas forming the oratorio begins with a grand opening chorus assuming absolutely royal splendor owing to its employment of three natural trumpets. Recitatives and arias for bass, tenor, and soprano alternate, and each cantata ends with a chorale. The more complex, more finely crafted melodic formation in the Easter Oratorio stands out significantly from the moving simplicity of Graun’s later works. In this respect as well by virtue of its colorful instrumentation, the Easter Oratorio is very much like the Christmas Oratorio and the »Grand Passion« Kommt her und schaut. A magnificent discovery!

CD

CPO

18.02.2013

761203779420

Fanfare: 'Want List' (2014)