This two-disc set honours the 800th anniversary of the
Schola Thomana Leipzig by presenting a complete performance of the
Israelsbrünnlein by Johann Hermann Schein, one of JS Bach’s
most illustrious predecessors as kantor. The collection has always
been held to be the most important set of motets produced by a German
composer in the seventeenth-century. The twenty-six pieces are written
in the prevailingly popular Italian madrigal form, and textually the
Old Testament is the most used source. As the notes make plain, they
were written for either festive or solemn occasions, and the music
goes a long way to bind madrigalian and polyphonic strands together
to produce a powerful and exciting semi-hybrid.
There is a point to note, however, regarding this set. Whilst a number
have been newly recorded (March 2012) seventeen were taped back in
Dresden in 2000 and were originally released at the time. Thus in
order to celebrate that anniversary, Hans-Christoph Rademann and his
Dresden choir has gone into the concert hall of the Hochschule für
Musik to complete the cycle. Also the original recording location
was the more appropriate acoustic of the Emmauskirche. Try as I might,
however - and I thought it particularly important here - I didn’t
detect any great fluctuation between venues beyond an inevitably greater
weight of resonance in the church recordings, and a dryer one in the
studio, so the engineering team deserve considerable applause.
In addition to the change in recording venue there’s the matter
of the choir itself which has seen an almost total overhaul in the
last twelve years. Very few singers, in fact only two, remain from
the 2000 session. Yet again, though, this makes no real difference
to the choral sonority or to the level of musicianship to be heard.
Luther’s German is succinct, unflowery, and very much to-the-point,
textual ambiguity being obviously inimical to him. Schein, who was
almost certainly the most musically gifted of the Leipzig Kantors
before the arrival of Bach, crafted this series of madrigals rooted
in rich, poetic archaisms that were not to be matched in German music
until the rise of Schütz. There are three or four singers to
a part and Rademann ensures that the instrumental accompaniments -
whether theorbo, lute, cello or organ - make their full expressive
point, but remain well-balanced. The fusion of Mediterranean richness
and German motet proves wholly successful, and this performance of
the cycle proves equally worthy. The choir’s approach to Schein
is as successful as its singing of Schütz, a composer with whom
it’s strongly associated, and there can be no higher compliment
than that.
Jonathan Woolf
see also review by Robert
Hugill
