1. Dido, Königin von Carthago I		1:05:34
2. Dido, Königin von Carthago II	  50:41

Dido, Königin von Karthago - Salomé Haller - Soprano
Anna, der Königin Dido Schwester - Jutta Böhnert - Soprano
Juno / Iris / Mercurius / Venus - Anna Prohaska - Soprano
Menalippe, Prinzessin aus Ägypthen - Doerthe Maria Sandmann - Soprano
Aeneas, Fürst der Trojaner - Colin Balzer - Tenor
Achates, des Aeneas getreuer Freund - Thomas Volle - Tenor
Juba, Printz von Tyrus - Holger Falk - Baritone
Hiarbas, Königin von Numidien - Nils Cooper - Bassbaritone
Chor - Wiebke Kretschmar, Dorothe Ingenfeld, Nils Giebelhausen
Elbipolis Barockorchester
Florian Heyerick - conductor 

Thursday, 15 April 2010 ; Konzerthaus Berlin

Christoph Graupner’s Singspiel for Hamburg, Dido, Königin von Carthago (1707), was quite new to me. It is one of those curious – to our ears, yet not necessarily to those of the time – works written in German and Italian, standard Italian arias doing their thing whilst the action was largely advanced in the vernacular. I should certainly be keen to learn more. The Egyptian princess Menalippe’s ‘Holdestes Lispeln der spielenden Fluthen’ proved vividly pictorial. One could almost see – one could certainly hear – those rippling waters through ravishing instrumental playing. This may be too early and the wrong country too, but Poussin more than once came to my mind. When later Prohaska turned to the Queen of Carthage herself, we heard first a German accompagnato (‘Der Himmel ist von Donner Keylen schwer…’) followed by its Italian aria, ‘Infido Cupido’. This was very much music written and communicated in the terms of early eighteenth-century opera seria. Hearing it in this particular context, we understood both its roots in earlier opera and much of what distinguished it from its predecessors too. Prohaska’s stylistic awareness is never a sterile thing, ‘dogma’ in the slightly misleading popular understanding of the term; it is and here was always put to expressive, dramatic use. Much the same might be said of her performance of the tempest aria that ensued: of a genre yet not over-determined by it. ---Mark Berry, operatoday.com

Christoph Graupner (13 January 1683 in Kirchberg – 10 May 1760 in Darmstadt) was a German harpsichordist and composer of high Baroque music who was a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann and George Frideric Handel.

After he died, Graupner's works fell into obscurity for a number of reasons. His manuscripts became the object of a long legal battle between his heirs and the rulers of Hesse-Darmstadt. A final court decision denied the Graupner estate ownership of the music manuscripts. The heirs were unable to obtain permission to sell or publish his works and they remained inaccessible to the public. Dramatic changes in music styles had reduced the interest in Graupner's music. On the positive side however, the Landgrave's seizure of Graupner's musical estate ensured its survival in toto. Fate was not so kind to J. S. Bach's musical legacy, for example. Another factor that contributed to Graupner's posthumous obscurity was that, unlike Bach, Graupner had very few pupils other than Johann Friedrich Fasch to carry on his musical legacy. As critic David Vernier has summed up, Graupner is "one of those unfortunate victims of fate and circumstance - a contemporary of Bach, Handel, Telemann, etc., who has remained largely -- and unfairly - neglected." ---JosefinaHW, talkclassical.com

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Cantata for Whitsunday
1. Choral : Wie Schön Leuchtet Der Morgenstern	3:16

Cantata For The First Sunday Of Advent
2. Concerto (Ténor Et Alto)	1:15
3. Aria: Affettuoso (Alto)	7:33
4. Choral: Vivace (Mélodie: Nun Komm Der Heiden Heilang)	0:53
5. Aria (Soprano, Basse)	5:17
6. Récitatif (Ténor)	1:01
7. Choral	0:53

Overture in F Major For Recorder and Strings
8. Ouverture - Allegro	5:20
9. La Speranza (Tempo Giusto)	2:53
10. Air(S) En Gavotte (I, II, III)	3:23
11. Menuet (I, II)	2:40
12. Air(S) (I, II)	5:11
13. Plaisanterie(S) (I, II, III)	4:02

Cantata For The First Sunday After Christmas
14. Dictum (Ténor)	0:41
15. Récitatif (Alto)	1:07
16. Aria (Alto)	2:43
17. Récitatif (Ténor)	1:00
18. Choral	0:55
19. Aria (Ténor)	2:44
20. Récitatif (Ténor)	1:01
21. Choral	0:58

Canata For Solo Bass, For The Third Day Of Christmas
22. Choral 	1:33
23. Récitatif	1:27
24. Aria : Vivace	5:19
25. Dictum	1:20
26. Récitatif	1:15
27. Aria : Allegro	4:33

Les Idées Heureuses
Geneviève Soly - director

Bach contemporary Christoph Graupner was a significant figure in 18th-century Lutheran church music, writing with a seemingly tireless facility for the cantata in its various configurations (he wrote more than 1400!). This program, another in Geneviève Soly and Analekta’s fine Graupner Project series, and its accompanying liner notes aim to provide a context “in order to better understand” this composer’s music, in this case the Christmas cantatas. So we’re given not only historical background regarding Darmstadt in the first half of the 18th century, but also a short, simple description of the Lutheran cantata, its structure, and the significance of its different sections. The choice of works is designed to show how Graupner handled both the organization of the textual material for three different services–First Sunday of Advent, Third Day of Christmas, and First Sunday after Christmas–and how he used a variety of performing forces to convey the meaning of the texts and the appropriate sense of occasion. Interestingly, we hear instances of Graupner’s adeptness for “word painting” and, as Bach so masterfully did, his ability to incorporate familiar chorale melodies into the larger musical fabric.

Anyone who may be expecting to find in Graupner a sort of unsung master worthy of Bachian pretensions won’t find what they’re looking for. Instead, they’ll discover a composer who was very comfortable with the idioms of his day, who knew how to write melodically interesting material, and, most importantly, understood perfectly the practical demands of his work, which (among other duties) was to provide new cantatas for Sundays and feast days, month after month, year after year. On evidence so far, he was able to perform this task with impressively varied use of soloists, orchestra, and chorus–and with the help of his able librettist Johann Lichtenberg. He created engaging arias–the extended alto piece in the Advent cantata “Machet die Tore weit”, for instance–and colorful instrumental accompaniments whose rhythmic/melodic/harmonic figures often add their own commentary on the text.

No, in Graupner we don’t find the profound import inherent in Bach’s every chorus, orchestral overture, or aria (contemporaries Zelenka and Heinichen come much closer), but we can easily appreciate his very functional, reverential style, the clear, uncluttered orchestration, and the direct and very appealing if comparatively unremarkable recitatives and arias. The orchestra here is a fine baroque ensemble and it plays capably with spirit and precision and with requisite care for stylistic mannerisms. The solo singers range from adequate (soprano and bass) to above average (the alto and tenor), but even so, there’s inconsistency among the soloists that both elevates some performances and diminishes the impact of others. Although the charming Overture for recorder and strings wasn’t part of Christmas festivities at Darmstadt, Soly includes it here for aesthetic reasons–because of the recorder’s long association with Christmas–and Natalie Michaud’s brilliant performance makes an excellent foil for the vocal works. First-rate sound complements and enhances everyone’s effort, and thanks to these committed musicians–and to Graupner’s vast and largely still-unexplored output–baroque vocal music fans have yet another CD justly begging for their attention. ---David Vernier, classicstoday.com

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