EW Wolf - Christmas Cantatas | CPO 5555242

EW Wolf - Christmas Cantatas

£13.25

In stock - available for despatch within 1 working day

Label: CPO

Cat No: 5555242

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Christmas

Release Date: 4th November 2022

Contents

Artists

Beate Mordal (soprano)
Elvira Bill (alto)
Georg Poplutz (tenor)
Matthias Vieweg (baritone)
Andrey Akhmetov (bass)
Kolner Akademie

Conductor

Michael Alexander Willens

Works

Wolf, Ernst Wilhelm

Auf, jauchzet, ihr Christen
Seid bose, ihr Volker
Willkommen, du schonster der Tage
Willkommen, du sehnlich erbetener Tag

Artists

Beate Mordal (soprano)
Elvira Bill (alto)
Georg Poplutz (tenor)
Matthias Vieweg (baritone)
Andrey Akhmetov (bass)
Kolner Akademie

Conductor

Michael Alexander Willens

About

In the 18th century, "well-stocked" church music was a natural tradition throughout central Germany: church services were embellished along the ecclesiastical year with cantatas appropriate to the liturgy for the glory of God, but also for the joy and "spiritual edification" of the visitors. From this treasure of hitherto unknown Christmas music, four cantatas by Ernst Wilhelm Wolf are presented for the first time on this recording. Wolf worked as court kapellmeister in Weimar, and the fact that Goethe rejected him as "self-indulgent" should not prevent us from admiring him as a very important composer of the transition. Musically, Wolf was greatly influenced by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in the empfindsamer Stil and by the works of the Berlin Kapellmeister Carl Heinrich Graun. He was also a prolific composer whose works were received with admiration by his contemporaries. The four cantatas show elements of the early classical and sensitive styles; the cantata choruses are often homophonic and songlike, polyphonic sections rather rare. All the cantatas prove to be individually conceived works that testify to the composer's mastery. Beautiful sounding arias, the naturalness of their expression and the dramatic compression in the individual movements are still convincing today. At the same time, the cantatas bear witness to the high quality of Protestant church music in the period after Johann Sebastian Bach and illustrate the high value of music within the liturgy. Today they can be a welcome addition to the repertoire for the Christmas season.

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