The music of a relatively unsung master

No sooner have I written about the 'unsung master' Philippe de Monte than Hyperion release a CD of his motets. Johann Kuhnau is also worth a visit.
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Intoxicating Heinichen from Dresden

If you like Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, and who doesn’t? Musica Antiqua Köln’s reissue of Heinichen’s contemporaneous Dresden Concerti should be in your collection.

The legendary Johann Sebastian Bach and the little known Johann David Heinichen provide an interesting contrast. The Brandenburg Concertos were dedicated to Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg, in whose household Bach was probably hoping to find work. The court at Brandenburg was a pretty cheerless place at that time under the rule of Ludwig’s uncle, the strictly Calvinist and despotic Friedrich Wilhelm 1, who was known as the Soldier King.

By contrast Saxony was ruled by the enlightened Catholic Augustus II, although the state and the people remained Lutheran in a move that renounced the established principle of ‘cuius regio, rius religio’. The electors of Saxony were great patrons of the arts, and their visionary patronage and policy of public access to artworks created the legendary Florence on the Elbe, and established Dresden as a creative centre ahead of Brandenburg’s Berlin.

As well as collecting works by Raphael, Titian and contemporary artists the electors maintained a court orchestra of fine musicians who had chamber works written for them by Albinoni, Vivaldi, Fasch and Telemann, and in 1773 Bach presented his settings of the Kyrie and Gloria from the Latin mass to Augustus in Dresden. and these eventually became the first part of the B minor Mass. To this flourishing musical centre came Johann David Heinichen. Son of an Evangelical pastor, he studied at the famous Thomas-Schule in Leipzig under Bach’s predecessor Johann Kuhnau, who I wrote about some time back, and in 1717 the Protestant Heinichen was appointed Kapellmeister in the Catholic court of Dresden.

In the twelve years before his death Heinichen composed works ranging from serenades to Catholic liturgical works for performance in Dresden. In 1992 Reinhard Goebel recorded Heinichen’s Dresden Concerti with Musica Antiqua Köln, and their evangelising performances won a number of awards, and were acclaimed for showcasing a neglected composer. Archiv has now reissued the Dresden Concerti as a mid-priced double CD. The music is inventive and intoxicating, the performances are energetic, the sound from the early instrument band captured in the studio of Deutschlandfunk in Cologne is exemplary, and the booklet includes an excellent explanatory essay by Reinhard Goebel. What an absolute tragedy that Musica Antiqua Köln was forced to disband at the end of 2006 due to a neurological disorder impeding Goebel's playing.

Although Dresden was at its zenith in the early 18th century, the city remained an important centre of Western art until the 20th century. Sadly Reinhard Goebel’s wonderfully informative essay ends with these words: ‘The recording is also dedicated to the remembrance of the much-loved Dresden of the past, 'Florence on the Elbe', the Baroque city extinguished, at least physically, on 13 February 1945.’

Now see Florence on the Elbe reborn.
Header image, Dresden 1748 by Bernardo Bellotto, and the three smaller images are slices, and in one case mirrors, of Bellotto. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Cracking Kuhnau from Skywalker Sound

Harmonia Mundi USA have found a great way to add value to the CD format. Their new 1+1 series offers double CDs for the price of one full price disc, with performances drawn from their wonderful back catalogue giving a mix of mainstream and lesser known repertoire.

I took two 1+1's on holiday to France in June, and was so impressed I bought another one there. Monastic Chant is a recital of 12th & 13th century European Sacred Music sung by the Theatre of Voices and directed by Paul Hillier in wonderfully atmospheric performances and recordings. Similarly William Christie's playing of Rameau's Pièces de clavecin (1724) and Nouvelles Suites de Pièces de clavecin (1728) also comes highly recommended. Strangely these entrancing Rameau pieces are not too well represented in the catalogue, so this 1+1 fills the gap nicely.

But the real winner for me was the double CD of Kuhnau's keyboard works. Now if you've never heard of Johann Kuhnau (see picture) don't be afraid to say so, I hadn't either. I now know he was one of the last Renaissance composers, and comes with a pretty good pedigree, although the text books usually consider him to be a rather dry forerunner of Bach. His early musical education was in Dresden, and he was something of a polymath, studying ancient and modern languages and mathematics, and also qualifying as a lawyer. He became organist of the famous Leipzig Thomaskirche forty years before J.S. Bach held the position, and was also cantor for the major Leipzig churches.

But there is an 'off the wall' streak in Kuhnau which belies his reputation for being boring. He published an early satirical novel, Der musicalische Quack-salber (The Musical Quack), and the first CD in this set is devoted to his embryonic keyboard sonatas which are called Frische Clavier-Fruchte (Fresh Keyboard Fruits). The 'off the wall' approach spreads over to the second CD; Kuhnau's Musicalische Vorstellung einiger Biblischer historien (The Biblicla Sonatas). These feature the pioneering use of mathematical structures in a fascinating prelude to the technique of J.S. Bach.

For the Kuhnau John Butt (see photo) plays harpsichord, clavichord and organ. The recordings date from Butt's peiod as an Associate Professor at Berkeley, and interestingly were made at Lucasfilm's Skywalker Sound studios in Marin County. (The organ tracks were recorded at Hertz Hall, University of California, Berkeley). The Lucasfilms sound is a sharp contrast to the usual resonant 'period' acoustics. The harpsichord is closely miced, firm and powerful, but aurally none the worse for the hi-tec studio setting. One complaint though. Why do keyboard players insist on mixing the clavichord and other instruments on the same CD? On paper it may seem a good way of breaking the potential monotony of 70 minutes of music making restricted to the harpsichord's register. But in practice it just doesn't work. The laws of physics dictate that the right level for the harpsichord, or organ, will make the clavichord sound like the twanging of distant elastic bands. I am afraid it doesn't work on this, or any other CD. Don't be put off though as the gems are the Fresh Keyboard Fruits which are all played on the harpsichord.

I bought the Kuhnau in the superb Harmonia Mundi shop in Avignon and paid 18 euros (£12, $21 US) for it. But these highly recommended 1+1 sets originate from Harmonia Mundi USA, and are far cheaper if bought from the US. The Kuhnau is available via Amazon marketplace seller Caiman USA for just £10 delivered to the UK, and the Amazon.com retail price is $17.98 (£10).

Although Kuhnau is a discovery for me, he is not for Hyperion who have recorded his sacred music with Robert King and the King's Consort. The audio samples indicate it is pretty exciting stuff. Try it for yourself here on an overgrown path.

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