An excellent performance
Lukas Hodorovsky | USA | 08/10/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Seriously, what else can you expect from Cantus Colln but exceptional musicality. I bought this cd because I enjoyed Geistliche Kantaten so much. I enthusiastically recommemd this album to baroque music lovers."
Reluctantly...
Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 09/11/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"...I have to acknowledge that this CD is a magnificent performance of glorious music, composed by the young cantor of the Thomas Church in Leipzig between 1645 and 1655. Johann Rosenmueller was first perceived in his time as the musical successor to Heinrich Schuetz by Schuetz himself, and the stylistic inheritance is obvious in these motets, which have all the rich palette of instrumental virtuosity of Schuetz's "Psalmen Davids." Cantus Coelln and Concerto Palatino combine forces on this CD to deliver a performance of opulent grandeur. Lutenist/conductor Konrad Junghanel clearly adores this music, interpreting it with vigor and sensitivity.
Why do I say "reluctantly" then? I'm an unforgiving Swede, that's why! I can never listen to Rosenmueller without remembering that he was expelled from his post and exiled from Germany in 1645 for "improper behavior" with the choir boys under his musical tutelage. He fled to Italy, where he produced excellent chamber music for another three decades. Well, you may say, why punish the music for the sins of its creator? Why relinquish this magnificent "History of the Nativity" merely because its composer was odious? Hey, I get it! I bought the CD, didn't I? and listened to it, and reviewed it with five stars!
Actually, Rosenmueller never wrote any such thing as a "Weinachtshistorie." Only the first track is a setting of the Gospel for Christmas Day from Luke 2. The other pieces are motets, very much in the style of Schuetz, written for various occasions and probably never heard together until this recording. All the better for the listener; the variety and splendor of these 'sacred symphonies' makes for a richer concert than the usual recitativo of a Nativity oratorio.
Like Schuetz, Rosenmueller wrote stellar obbligato parts for cornetto players, just the sort of parts that exhibit the virtuosity of Bruce Dickey and Doron Sherwin, the cornettists of Concerto Palatino, whose lightning-bolt flashes of demi-semi-quavers are worth the price of the CD alone. The longest and most magnificent piece on the disk is the last, Entsetze dich Natur, a polyphonic choral setting of a mystical poem by Caspar Ziegler, with six vocal soloists, cornetti, violins, trombones, and organ.
The cover art on this CD, for a change, expresses the music eloquently. Sorry, friends, but you'll have to forgive Rosenmueller for his human weakness; his music is divine."
Stunning
Mel Zaloudek | chicago | 07/01/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"there's a warmth and compassion to rosenmuller's music, perhaps deriving from his troubled life ....... konrad junghanel wonderfully brings together his favored vocalists and instrumentalists ( even a few from his early days with reinhard goebel ) and invites the ever-incredible concerto palatino to provide the authentic hornwork, so how could the result be anything less than lovely?"
