Nayler&Co Boekhandel & Modern Antiquariaat*Ramsj-on-Line

In collaboration with the distinguished Portuguese writer José Saramago, Italian composer Azio Corghi was commissioned to write Divara - Wasser und Blut to commemorate the city of Münster's foundation.

The conductor of these three great sacred works -BWV1, BWV40, BWV6- was Thomaskantor at Leipzig as well as a tenor soloist under several of his predecessors, giving him a special feel for handling both vocal and instrumental forces.

The Mass in B minor occupies a unique place in Bach's output.
The Mass' 4 sections -Missa, Symbolum Nicenum, Sanctus, and a final section comprising the Osanna, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, Dona nobis pacem- took shape over a period of 25 years. His only complete setting of the Latin Ordinary of the Mass is also the only one of his vocal works for which he seems never to have envisaged a complete performance.

Bach's Mass in B minor belongs to the cantata mass. In the contrast between soloists and chorus and in the handling of orchestral colour the scope for depicting emotions was extended to settings of the Ordinarium of the Mass -Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus-Benedictus, Agnus Dei-.

If ever there was a family in which an extraordinary dispositon for the same art seemed to be hereditary, it was certainly the family of Bach; through six successive generations there were scarcely two or three members of it who had not received from nature the gifts of a very distinguished talent for music. The aim of this recording is to present a panorama of the sacred vocal music of the Bach family.

Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach war noch einige Jahre Kantor in Hamburg. Obwohl die Hamburger sicher nicht die Passions-Musik des Johann Sebastian kannten, war es damals gar nicht üblich, Musik der Vergangenheit zu spielen. Also schrieb der Sohn eine eigene Johannes-Passion.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, as part of his regular duties as kapellmeister in Hamburg, composed 19 passion settings, alternating the four Gospel texts so that a new setting of a given text appeared once every four years, as his predecessor Georg Philipp Telemann had done.

The present recording of the St. Matthew Passion was made over 22 sessions between June and August 1958. It was recorded in stereo. Karl Richter engaged several outstanding soloists for this recording Ernst Haefliger sang the Evangelist and the tenor arias, Kieth Engen was Jesus, and the solo arias were entrusted to Irmgard Seefried, Hertha Topper, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Tolzer Knabenchor

The Notenbuchlein possesses the charm of an arbitrary collection with its mixture of serious and light-hearted compositions and has the character of the later very popular musical house-book, which allows us to glance into Bach's private family life. Although this selection of pieces is only a small excerpt of the Notenbuchlein it conveys the special character of these compositions.

In the early 1980s, Joshua Rifkin began publishing research that presented a radical challenge to received ideas about the performance of Bach's vocal music. Rifkin's central thesis, based on meticulous examination of the original performing material, was that each of Bach's singers and players read from his own copy of the music, rather than sharing.