When Schumann was offered the post of music director in Düsseldorf in 1850, his first main project was to perform the St. John Passion, which had never been presented there, in April 1851: “It is much bolder, more powerful, and more poetic than the St. Matthew. This one seems to me not to be free of diffuseness and to be exceedingly long, but the other – how compact, how thoroughly genial, and of what art!” Robert Schumann

In an age of artistic conformity, Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745) had a refreshingly individual voice. In his own time he was described as 'a reserved, bigoted Catholic, but also a respectable, quiet, unassuming man, deserving of the greatest respect'. His music earned Bach's respect for its serious contrapuntal procedures; today's listeners, though, are more immediately charmed by Zelenka's quirky turns of phrase and flashes of original genius. There are plenty of these in the Passion oratorio Gesù al Calvario (1735), one of the composer's three late oratorios.

Some composers have a strong influence on later generations. Sometimes this influence persists a long time after their death. Beethoven is just one example. It took a while before Brahms dared to write a symphony; he wasn't sure he could live up to the standard Beethoven had set. Another is George Frideric Handel. He was a man of the theatre and preferred to compose operas but it was mainly because of his oratorios that he was admired - and feared. Mozart was so impressed by Handel's oratorios that he arranged several of them and Haydn's oratorio 'Die Schöpfung' is unthinkable without the model of Handel's Messiah. The oratorio 'Die Könige in Israel' by Ferdinand Ries shows how long Handel's influence lasted. It shows the traces of Handel's style and yet for all this Ries feared the standard Handel had set. This explains the story behind the oratorio.

Beethoven’s gifted pupil Ferdinand Ries was never entirely forgotten, but it is only in recent years that CPO and Hermann Max have dedicated themselves with great success to the rediscovery of this spirited late classicist and romanticist. Ries’ oratorio Der Sieg des Glaubens (The Triumph of Faith), is heard here for the first time since 1829 where is was written in response to a commission for the Lower Rhine Music Festival in Aachen. The work develops a philosophical discourse dealing with the power of faith and the grace of God.

Johann Heinrich Rolle belongs to the generation of J. S. Bach’s elder sons. Pipped at the post by C. P. E. Bach as Telemann’s successor in Hamburg, Rolle centred his musical life round Berlin and his native Magdeburg. Recitatives, arias, duets and choruses make up this two-part music drama which is both lyrical and on occasion vividly pictorial in its imagery. A fine performance.

Andreas Romberg numbers among music history’s forgotten composers. He was celebrated as a violin virtuoso and a composer, but this did not keep him from falling through the safety net into historiographical obscurity with its often-unjust judgments. We are recording his symphonies over time in the hope that he will receive more attention as a composer. Bonn, Hamburg, and Gotha were his career stations. In 1793, while still in Bonn, he wrote his Messiah, and in 1800 he also performed it in Hamburg, his new place of work. He without doubt regarded it as his favorite and main work, and over the years he repeatedly revised it. klassik-heute. com in April 2008: »Some marvelously atmospheric delights that do not fade away after a single hearing – of which I have been happy to convince myself in what so far have been three complete ‘sessions.’«

Last year’s Magdeburg Festival Days were marked by an extraordinary event: the revival of Telemann’s last known extant passion composition, the St. Luke Passion of 1748, by the Rheinische Kantorei and the Kleines Konzert under Hermann Max. In the mid-nineteenth century the autograph made its way to Berlin, where it today is preserved as the only source for this composition. The historical edition was prepared especially for the modern repeat performance in Magdeburg. Every four years Telemann returned to the same passion narrative, always employing the language of music to occupy himself in new ways with the gospel message of each of the four evangelists.

Although his name might not rate very highly on the recognition meter even of classical music buffs, Franz Tunder was a consequential entity in the early history of the German Baroque. Tunder served as organist at the Marienkirche in Lübeck from 1641 to his death in 1667, and during that time instituted the Abendmusiken, the first series of public concerts to take place in Germany. Seventeen vocal "concertos" exist from Tunder's pen and they were created for these special events; little more than half of them appear on this generous and well-performed CPO disc, Franz Tunder: Concerti. Conductor Hermann Max leads Das Kleine Konzert and the singing group Rheinische Kantorei in 10 concerti, which uses a variety of singers in frontline combinations. Tunder must have had some good basses in his chorus, as they have most of the hardest music in the Concerti, and five of these ten works are sung by bass or basses alone. Both men used here, Ekkehard Abele and Yoshitaka Ogasawara, do an excellent job. The string parts are crisp and do not dawdle, and Max never allows the music to get too grandiose, wisely keeping it within the boundaries of the chamber idiom to which it belongs. The music is never ornately busy and has a relaxed, soothing effect.

J.S. Bach’s talent seems to flow in his grandson’s blood at least as strongly as in any of his sons. Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach’s two symphonies (as well as the vocal works featured here) inhabit the sound-world of mid- to late Mozart, albeit without the brilliance (in every sense of the word). This Bach’s wind writing is tasteful, and makes good use of the (then) newly-arrived clarinet. The Andante of the C major symphony is quite beautiful, with a dolefully sweet oboe solo throughout the movement. The period strings of Das Kleine Konzert are lively, clean, and in tune, although the violin soloist is not quite up to the rapid passage-work at the end of the G major symphony.

Leopold Anton Kozeluch, often inaccurately and unjustly portrayed as a scheming opponent of Mozart and Haydn, was actually an extraordinarily popular and successful composer during his own lifetime. Already in 1781 Kozeluch had such an outstanding reputation that the Salzburg archbishop offered him the court organist's post left vacant by Mozart. The Bohemian composer's some 250 works include symphonies, piano music, operas, cantatas, string quartets, and a number of oratorios. Moses in Egypt, an oratorio based on the Book of Exodus from the Old Testament, was premiered in the old Burgtheater in 1787.

Letzten Monat konnte ich Ihnen den letzten komponierenden Enkel Johann Sebastian Bachs vorstellen, und diesen Monat können sie die lohnende – und spannende – Bekanntschaft mit einem seiner Zeitgenossen machen, der ebenfalls aus der weitverzweigten Bach-Dynastie stammt: Johann Michael Bach (1745–1820). Er gehört ebenfalls der Enkelgeneration Johann Sebastians an; der hessische Bach-Zweig, aus dem er stammt, hat sich jedoch so frühzeitig von den thüringischen Hauptlinien getrennt, dass heute das genaue Verwandtschaftsverhältnis zu Johann Sebastian nicht mehr geklärt werden kann.

Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach was a child of his times, which were characterised by new beginnings and profound changes in the political and cultural arena as well as in the societal and philosophical spheres. The “Miserere” and the motet “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” on this recording beautifully document these transformations. MDG is now presenting an archive production that has achieved historic status. Hermann Max, a pioneer in the field of historically informed performance practice, performs with the Rheinische Kantorei and his “Das Kleine Konzert” ensemble in a production for the Western German Radio (WDR).