Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Telemann: Die Auferstehung; C. P. E. Bach: Die Auferstehung

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Thinking about how American consumers have a reputation for bargain hunting, this Easter I'm prepared to offer you listeners a twofer deal: two resurrections for the price of one! That's right, folks: back-to-back oratorios that have a certain locale in common: Hamburg, Germany. Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) was resident composer in the cosmopolitan port city from 1721 until his death. He was music director for the five major churches in town. He long outlived his colleague in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach, who wrote only two Passion settings. Telemann wrote at least 27 Passions or Passion oratorios, and circa 1700, church cantatas, plus operas (Bach wrote no operas at all) and piles of instrumental music. Telemann's Resurrection oratorio Die Auferstehung (1761) is a work of relatively brief duration dating from the composer's old age. Remarkably progressive, in an advanced late baroque style, you could label this music "pre-classical." The octogenarian master seems to have kept pace with the latest stylistic trends. The German CPO label recording of this mini-oratorio, released in 1999 has got to be its world premiere on disc. Telemann's score gets a beautifully performed, historically informed treatment from the Telemann Chamber Orchestra of Michaelstein and the Chamber Choir of Magdeburg, the composer's home town. Ludger Remy conducts the singers and period instrument players. I last broadcast the Telemann Resurrection oratorio on Easter Sunday, April 23, 2000.

Telemann remained active in his musical post in Hamburg to the very end of his days. The prestigious position was open following his death in 1767 and was taken up by one of Bach's sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714-88), who transferred out of his post in Berlin at the court of Prussian king Frederick The Great. C. P. E. Bach's Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu ("The Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus," 1778) is in the early classical "galant" style- more particularly the Empfindsamer Stil, the "sensitive" or "expressive" style this composer in particular cultivated. He considered it one of his finest works, from which, in his own words, "young composers can learn something." This is not a Passion oratorio based on one of the Gospel accounts. The libretto is an imaginative piece of Protestant German religious poetry, suitable for a lengthy dramatic cantata. I first featured C. P. E. Bach's Auferstehung cantata on Easter Sunday, April 11, 1993. I drew upon a 1992 Virgin Classics compact disc release, with baroque specialist Philippe Herreweghe leading the singers of the Collegium Vocale Ghent and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Then along came a Hyperion CD release in 2002 of this same work as interpreted by another baroque specialist conductor of that era, Sigiswald Kuijken, directing his La Petite Bande. That second recording went over the air on Easter Sunday, 2004, again falling on April 11th of that year, when it was paired with a Hännsler CD recording of a St. Matthew Passion (1746) by Telemann. This Easter I revert to the Virgin Classics/Herreweghe recording.