Weynacht Gesaenge (Baroque Advent and Christmas Music)
Stimmwerck [Franz Vitzthum (countertenor); Klaus Wenk, Gerhard Hölzle
(tenors); Marcus Schmidl (bass-baritone)] with guests: Nele Gramß (soprano),
Christoph Eglhuber (lute, percussion), Michael Ebert (organ), Reinhild
Waldek (harp)
rec. 11-13 April 2012, Himmelfahrtskirche München-Sendling, Germany.
DDD
German and Latin texts and German translations of Latin included but
no English translations.
CHRISTOPHORUS CHR77364 [67:51]
Reviewed as lossless download from eclassical.com,
without booklet (also available in mp3 and from dealers on CD) also
for streaming by subscribers and as lossless download, with pdf booklet,
from classicsonlinehd.com.
We seem to have missed this when it was released in
2012. It offers an interesting anthology of Lutheran Christmas music
from the generation before Buxtehude and Bach, interspersed with the
‘O’ Antiphons sung at the end of Advent in the Roman rite and concluding
with a Latin work by a composer who died in the earliest years of the
Reformation.
Don’t expect jollifications: this is by and large a set of considered
performances. Even Puer natus in Bethlehem, which is often sung
with quite a swing in Latin or in its German version, Ein Kind geborn
zu Bethlehem (instrumental version, track 6), receives a fairly
sedate performance here if compared with Paul McCreesh’s recording (Prętorius
Christmas Mass, DG Archiv 4791757, mid-price – review
of earlier release) or on the equally wonderful John Butt recording
of Bach’s Magnificat and Cantata No.63, with other music for
Christmas Vespers (Linn CKD469 – Recording
of the Month).
The McCreesh Christmas Mass CD gets played pretty often every year and
I’m sure that the Butt recording will be joining it just as often in
future. For more pensive occasions, however, the Christophorus recording
is also very good of its kind. The beautifully delicate singing of
the opening O Jesulein zart, a cradle song familiar in English
as ‘O little one sweet’, sets the tone.
I could have wished for slightly more forthright singing in the antiphon
O clavis David (track 2) and, indeed, in the other ‘O’ antiphons,
but track 3, Fit porta Christi pervia (‘The gate is made open
to Christ’) is sung about as forthrightly as you might wish – almost
what I call the ‘jolly japes’ school of renaissance singing – while
on track 4 Hassler’s Mit Ernst, o Menschenkinder receives another
sensitive performance befitting words which exhort mankind seriously
to prepare for the coming of Christ.
There’s some of the familiar here: Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
and In dulci jubilo were almost mandatory for such a collection
but the latter is given as a harp solo (track 25) and it’s hard to call
Es ist ein Ros stale when it’s as beautifully sung as on track
9. There’s plenty of the unfamiliar, too, including music for Advent
as well as Christmas. Some of the composers, such as Leonhard Paminger
(Track 10) were not known to me even as names – he seems to be a uniquely
Stimmwerck discovery.
Having heard the one work here, however, I turned to Stimmwerck’s complete
album of sacred vocal music by Paminger, with David Erler (countertenor)
as their guest on this occasion. Apart from a rather close recording,
which I see was Johan van Veen’s only objection, too – review
– these are splendid performances of some very worthwhile music (Christophorus
CHR77331 – from classicsonlinehd.com,
lossless with pdf booklet). There’s a brief click early on track 1
which is also present on the Qobuz version of this album and thus, I
presume, generic.
The performances by the regular members of Stimmwerck and their ‘guests’
contribute to a very enjoyable collection. With the archaic spelling
of their name this group seems tailor-made for music of this period.
I’m a bit less sure about the cod archaism of the German title of the
album but it’s harmless fun. Of an earlier Stimmwerck recording which
he liked Johan van Veen noted that the upper line was a little stretched
– review
– on this recording the guest appearance of Nele Gramß (soprano) relieves
the pressure on Franz Vitzthum, though she’s a little under-employed.
I’d have liked to hear more of her.
The recording is good but it benefits from a slight volume lift for
greatest impact – at normal levels the solo singing of the plainsong
antiphons in particular sounds a little distant.
Somewhere along the line the track details from all download and streaming
sources indicate that the first track, O Jesulein zart, is by
Samuel Scheidt ‘after Bach’s BWV493’. That can hardly be, since Scheidt
was almost a century before Bach’s time: it’s actually Scheidt’s music
on which Bach later based his own setting. There’s an odd typo: Dies
est lętitię is correctly spelled among the texts, but Dies est
lętitia in the track listing is meaningless – this in a booklet
which takes Martin Luther, no less, to task, for naming his Christmas
composition Von (sic!) Himmel hoch . Granted that we usually
know it as Vom Himmel hoch, the words set by Prętorius
and others, but Luther might have known what he was doing: he is widely
regarded as having helped to fix modern High German.
English listeners without a good knowledge of German will find no help
with the texts in the booklet: they are all in German or in Latin with
German translations. There are, however, helpful notes in English as
well as German.
At $11.39 the eclassical download is marginally less expensive than
classicsonlinehd’s £7.99 but it comes without the booklet which the
latter provides. Classicsonlinehd also provide an extra, thirty-first
track, not listed in the booklet and not on the emusic download or the
Qobuz streamed version – a sixteenth-century setting – by Cornelius
Freundt? – of the words Geboren ist uns der heilige Christ.
It’s so well done, with typically crisp ensemble from Stimmwerck, that
it’s a pity that it isn’t included on the CD or the other download versions.
This is mostly music for a contemplative Christmas rather than a knees-up,
but there are any number of recordings of the livelier baroque music
for the season, often with brass accompaniment. There’s plenty of room
in my book for both.
Brian Wilson
Contents
Samuel SCHEIDT (1587-1654 ) O Jesulein zart [2:31]
Gregorian Antiphon O clavis David [1:05]
Anonymous Fit porta Christi pervia [2:10]
Hans Leo HASSLER (1564-1612) Mit Ernst, o Menschenkinder
[3:32]
Gregorian Antiphon O Adonai [SW] 0:52
Esaias REUSNER Senior (c.1600-c.1670) Puer natus in Bethlehem
(Lute solo) [1:15]
Anonymous Gaude, gaude lętare [1:40]
Gregorian Antiphon O rex gentium [0:47]
Michael PRĘTORIUS (1571-1621) Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
[2:46]
Leonhard PAMINGER (1495-1567) Kaiser Augustus leget an
[2:10]
Michael PRĘTORIUS Den die Hirten lobten sehre [2:22]
Gregorian Antiphon O Emmanuel [0:47]
Michael PRĘTORIUS Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (harp
solo) [3:14]
Der Morgenstern ist aufgedrungen [1:43]
Gregorian Antiphon O Sapientia [0:55]
Petrus SCINTILLARIUS (16th.century) Nox imminet [2:29]
Johann HUEGEL (ca. 1510-1584/85); Hans Leo HASSLER Dies est
lętitię /Ein Kindelein so löbelich [3:40]
Leonhart SCHRÖTER (1532-1601) Joseph, lieber Joseph
mein [1:41]
Esaias REUSNER Senior Joseph, lieber Joseph mein (lute
solo) [1:53]
Gregorian Antiphon O Oriens [SW] 0:51
Anonymous Resonet in laudibus (organ solo) [1:24]
Andreas RASELIUS (1561/63-1602); Johann Hermann SCHEIN (1586-1630)
Christum wir sollen loben schon [1:27]
Anonymous Christum wir sollen loben schon (organ solo)
[1:49]
Johann Hermann SCHEIN; Melchior VULPIUS (ca. 1570-1615); Andreas
RASELIUS; Johannes ECCARD (1553-1611) Nun komm der Heiden Heyland
[3:35]
Esaias REUSNER Senior In dulci jubilo (lute solo) [1:56]
Anonymous (Thomas POPELIUS ?) Virga Jesse [1:55]
Michael PRĘTORIUS; Johann Hermann SCHEIN Vom Himmel hoch
[3:00]
Gregorian Antiphon O Radix Jesse [0:51]
Gregorian Sequence Als der gütige Gott [4:39]
Thomas STOLTZER (1480/85-1526) O admirabile commercium
[4:16]
