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Kuhnau: Sacred Music
Johann Kuhnau, Robert King, King's Consort
Kuhnau: Sacred Music
Genre: Classical
 
  •  Track Listings (36) - Disc #1

This recording will be a happy revelation to most listeners. Due to the overshadowing figure of J.S. Bach, much music and many composers from 18th-century Germany never reach the light of concert programs or recordings. On...  more »

     
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CD Details

All Artists: Johann Kuhnau, Robert King, King's Consort
Title: Kuhnau: Sacred Music
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Label: Hyperion UK
Release Date: 10/27/1998
Album Type: Import
Genre: Classical
Styles: Opera & Classical Vocal, Chamber Music, Historical Periods, Baroque (c.1600-1750), Classical (c.1770-1830)
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 034571170596

Synopsis

Amazon.com
This recording will be a happy revelation to most listeners. Due to the overshadowing figure of J.S. Bach, much music and many composers from 18th-century Germany never reach the light of concert programs or recordings. On evidence of the five church cantatas and one motet featured here, Johann Kuhnau was a highly accomplished, versatile, and sufficiently inventive composer--a description entirely at odds with his reputation as a dull, conservative functionary. Of course, this isn't Bach, and there are many sections of these works that are merely interesting and competent. But then we hear something like the beautiful countertenor aria in the cantata "O heilige Zeit," and we find ourselves in the vicinity if not the immediate presence of Bach himself. This is wonderful stuff, and The King's Consort leaves us not only impressed and uplifted but with a new respect for this unjustly neglected composer. --David Vernier
 

CD Reviews

Essential & Splendid Early Baroque recording
Marcolorenzo | Italy | 01/02/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)

"Johann Kuhnau, J.S. Bach's predecesor as cantor at the Thomaskirke in Liepzig is represented here in a series of splendid cantatas celebrating the goodness of God's Divine Providence and the importance and benefits of staying in the calm of God's presence in the midst of world trouble and falsity. The text of these pieces alone is enough to keep your spirits up in these times, but it's the splendid orchestral writing full of lyric melody and intricate contrapuntal writing that makes these pieces very exciting and essential and very special for anyone interested in the Baroque period. The style of these works has elements of conservative Lutheran sacred music reminiscent of Bach's Mulhausen period cantatas; and one can also see the influence of Schutz (and through him Monteverdi). But the more remarkable fact is that these early pieces (probably ca. 1705) present and synthesize the forwarding looking currents of German and Italianate operatic writing to be later fully developed by Bach and Handel as well as Telemann and Keiser. Vocally this disc is very moving and highly enjoyable with the minor reservation for the strange diction of Deborah York in the second cantata "Weicht ihr Sorgen....". These works are essential for developing an understanding of the influences and currents which underlie the Leipzig cantatas of Bach and the operatic works of Handel in general. Highly moving and emotionally beautiful musically they would be an excellent and privledged way to start off any day, enveloped in the realms of Celestial glory and Divine presence. A discovery of a rather unknown composer, which brings great joy and delight. A real and glorious surprise!"