Members of Finnish Baroque Orchestra - Christoph Graupner: Trio Sonatas (2014)

Finnish Baroque Orchestra’s second release of Christoph Graupner’s (1683–1760) music continues to reveal delightful masterpieces by the Baroquemaster, who November 2014 during his lifetime was even more well known than his colleague Johann Sebastian Bach. After the acclaimed release of Graupner’s orchestral works (ODE12202; The Finnish broadcasting company YLE Record of the Year 2013), this new album focuses on some of the chamber works by Graupner – the Trio Sonatas.

Graupner was extremely productive as a composer, with a catalogue of over 2’000 works varying from orchestral works to cantatas, concertos and chamber music. He also possessed a unique personal style of writing music and often favoured certain rarer instruments in his works. Among these are the viola d’amore as well as the chalumeau, both instruments being heard also on this disc.

From his contemporaries Graupner’s music stands out with its exceptional command of melody and harmony.

The 1990s fashion for dispensing as many recordings as possible of ‘newly discovered’ Baroque music did not always guarantee the resurgence of long-hidden masterpieces: many had lain undiscovered for centuries with good reason. The music of the assiduous Christoph Graupner (who beat Bach for his job at Leipzig but was made an offer he couldn’t refuse to stay where he was) is perhaps more worthy than that, though. Much of his output was closed to public scrutiny due to a dispute between his estate and the State for many years, and only became accessible once their differences had been settled and the manuscripts placed in the University of Darmstadt. Now that they are back in the public domain, the sprightly Finnish Baroque Orchestra has taken it upon itself to inject long-lost momentum into his reputation, and this third volume covers the trio sonatas with characteristic sunny countenance.

Although the continuo part is left largely unembellished, it is nevertheless markedly perky in its demeanour, which gives the music the sort of forward drive and animation that lifts the music into an entirely different league of engagement. Although it would be inaccurate to say that Graupner is equal to Bach (or any other ‘great’ composer with whom he is unlucky enough to be competing for notoriety), it
is concomitantly fair to suggest that his neglect has been unwarranted artistically; and that fact, combined with the meticulous accuracy of blend and tuning (even in the sonata for chalumeau, the honking folk precursor to the clarinet), skilfully combined here with rustic high-spiritedness, has created a disc as much pioneering as it is enjoyable.

Review by Caroline Gill, Gramophone

Ondine and the Finnish Baroque Orchestra have warmed us up to Christoph Graupner with their recording of Orchestral Suites. This might seem a grander project but with an orchestra numbering teens rather than tens of musicians and plenty of intimate chamber-musical moments in those orchestral works these titles go together like peas in a pod.

Particularly distinctive is the sound of the chalumeau in two of these trios, an instrument which has lent its name to the lower range sound of today’s clarinet. As you might expect, this soft and mellifluous sound is perfectly balanced with the gentle partnership of lute and violin, but it is an unusual colour and one which lends a conversational voice to these pieces. The combination with bassoon in GWV 201 is particularly delicious.

Christoph Graupner is associated with a vast number of cantatas as well as a substantial output of orchestral work, keyboard partitas and chamber music, so this programme is only a small sample of the trios. Searching online this was the only recording currently available of such works by this composer, so I have no comparison material, but with the quality of playing on offer here I don’t feel much need to complain about this situation. The booklet notes tell us that Graupner’s manuscripts were long inaccessible due to a legal dispute but that they are now available for study at the library in Darmstadt University, so it seems likely that there will be more previously unknown music from this source, something which is to be welcomed wholeheartedly.

The musicianship in these performances is exemplary, with continuo harpsichord nicely balanced and played with Germanic restraint, the aforementioned winds projecting with character and plenty of rhythmic precision as well as lyrical expressiveness. The same goes for violin and gamba, and the sweet tone of Perta Aminoff’s flute in GWV 207 deserves mention though Graupner’s endless sequences in the first movement of this trio are not his finest moment.

A contemporary of J.S. Bach, Graupner’s music is allied more closely to that of his friend Telemann, and it is fairly clear how his easy and entertaining sounds made him more popular than Bach, dubbed as ‘parochial’ in the booklet notes and more associated with the church organ loft than in the courtly fashions of the day. Today we enjoy Bach’s transcendent creativity more, but there is much to appreciate in Graupner’s melodic inventiveness and sense of fun. GWV 208 has echoes of Vivaldi in its duelling violins, the changes in instrumentation between sonatas make for a perfect and immaculately recorded programme, and each sonata offers its own inner contrasts and moments of joyous surprise.

Review by Dominy Clements, MusicWeb-International