Sinfonias from the Enlightenment by HASSE, GRAUN, C.P.E. BACH, W.F. BACH, HAYDN AND MOZART moderntimes_1800 chamber orchestra on authentic instruments Ilia Korol & Julia Moretti artistic direction 1 Sinfonias from the Enlightenment by HASSE, GRAUN, C.P.E. BACH, W.F. BACH, HAYDN AND MOZART moderntimes_1800 chamber orchestra on authentic instruments Ilia Korol & Julia Moretti artistic direction 2 3 CD 1 JOHANN ADOLF HASSE (1699–1783) WILHELM FRIEDEMANN BACH (1710-1784) Sinfonia D major* for Alcide al bivio, festa teatrale (Vienna, 1760) Sinfonia D major from cantata Dies ist der Tag, Falck 64 (1746-64) for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings and basso continuo for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, bassoon, 2 horns, strings and basso continuo [1] Con affetto. Lento maestoso. Allegro 2:57 [10] Allegro e maestoso 3:43 [2] Lento con sordino. Poco piano 2:49 [11] Andante 3:02 [3] Allegro assai 2:10 [12] Vivace 3:14 JOHANN GOTTLIEB GRAUN (1702-1771) CARL PHILIPP EMANUEL BACH Sinfonia E flat major* Sinfonia E flat major* Wq deest for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings and basso continuo for 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings and basso continuo [4] Allegro 2:51 [13] Allegro di molto 2:43 [5] Mesto e andante con sordino 2:42 [14] Larghetto con sordino 3:26 [6] Allegro 1:32 [15] Allegretto 3:04 CARL PHILIPP EMANUEL BACH (1714-1788) total time 45:37 Sinfonia B flat major* Wq deest for 2 flutes, bassoon, strings and basso continuo * world première recording [7] Allegro moderato 5:32 [8] Poco Adagio con sordino 3:53 [9] Presto 1:54 4 5 CD 2 moderntimes_1800 JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809) chamber orchestra on authentic instruments Symphony no. 39 in g minor Hob. 1:39 (before 1770) Ilia Korol concertmaster & direction for 2 oboes, bassoon, 4 horns and strings [1] Allegro assai 5:36 violin 1 cello horn [2] Andante 4:13 David Drabek Claire Wilhelm Bruns [3] Menuet – Trio 3:13 Diana Kiendl Pottinger-Schmidt Tilman Schärf [4] Finale. Allegro di molto 5:11 Anna Melkonyan Kaspar Singer Nikolaus Walch Gerli Singer Sabine Scharnagl WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) violin 2 Symphony no. 29 in A major K 201 (Salzburg, 1774) Piroska Batori double bass trumpets for 2 oboes, 2 horns and strings Florian Hasenburger Jan Krigovsky Andreas Lackner [5] Allegro moderato 9:50 Ursula Wykypiel Alexandra Dienz Christian Gruber [6] Andante 9:39 Christiane [7] Menuetto – Trio – Menuetto 3:17 Bruckmann-Hiller flute timpani [8] Allegro con spirit 6:35 Linde Brunmayr-Tutz Paul Bramböck viola Julia Stocker total time 47:37 Pablo de Pedro cembalo Wolfram Fortin oboe Norbert Zeilberger Maud Fheodoroff Julia Moretti Dominika Trefflinger bassoon Rainer Johannsen Marita Schaar 6 7 Frederick II of Prussia was brought up by the meister” (court music director), Franz Benda iron hand of his father with unconditional violinist and Georg Benda viola player in his discipline and cruelty. Having developed court orchestra, and Johann Joachim Quantz philosophical inclinations very early on in his – who had hidden himself in a cupboard away life, he corresponded with Voltaire and was a from Frederick’s father during the former’s se- musician and composer. Meanwhile he was of cret flute lessons – was his court composer. He course a militarist and man of power: in order invited Bach senior and gave him the famous to consolidate Prussia’s position in Europe he “thema regis” upon which Bach composed his plunged his country into a state of war that Musical Offering; and he used the invasion lasted years. For the people he prescribed the of Dresden as an opportunity to get to know light of reason, the clarity of scholarly learning Johann Adolph Hasse and make music with “…everything that enlightens the mind lifts up the soul and science, and progress away from intel- him and his wife Faustina Bordoni, a singer instead of demeaning it. lectual immaturity – juxtaposed to this, fitness acclaimed throughout Europe. If only it were God’s will that scholarly learning for military service and physical toughening would be more favoured here!” up – but he also decreed that censorship be A new sensibility also associated with Sturm practised in Prussia. Nevertheless, in a single und Drang was emerging during the second breath Kant called his epoch “the Age of half of the 18th century alongside the philo- Enlightenment or Frederick’s century”, and no sophical and literary Enlightenment, a move- European monarch enjoyed greater esteem ment borne on the shoulders of the Enlighten- among the French intellectuals than this king, ment, but which desired to be understood as who, in their opinion, was worth a friendship. its opposing pole: it criticised the exclusive Frederick gathered together Germany’s musi- primacy of reason and, in the spirit of Rous- cal elite at his court: Carl Philipp Emanuel seau, lay emphasis on emotion, on naturalness Bach was his “Kammermusikus”, Johann Gott- and simplicity of feeling, endowed by nature lieb Graun his first violinist and orchestra lead- to every human being. Thus the composers of er, his brother Carl Heinrich his “Hofkapell- the Age of Sensibility, too, saw their primary 8 9 task in ‘touching the ear and heart’, or, as Lu- take in the lad and keep an eye on him “so he pulling the symphony by every means pos- became the figurehead of opera seria; he and igi Boccherini said (he had been Prussian court doesn’t go to the dogs.”)* sible out of the mood it fell into in the middle Metastasio were close friends and together composer since 1787): “I know very well that movement. This CD actually includes the first they determined the genre until around 1770. music has to speak to the human heart, and “Standing on the threshold” of a new de- recording ever of the symphonies by Hasse, The court orchestra at his disposal in Dresden this is what I am striving for. Because music velopment in music and stepping over this Graun and Carl Philipp. was described by Diderot in the “Encyclo- which does not express feelings and passion threshold to enter into a new world of sound The music of Wilhelm Friedemann was also pédie” as the best in the world; from 1760 on, is empty.” can be heard most clearly in Graun and C.P.E. interlaced with new stylistic elements, though Hasse had been cautiously responding to the Bach: the slow movements are still in the gal- they are sometimes juxtaposed to late ba- upheavals initiated in France in the “querelle Composers like Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, lant style, at times we feel transported into a roque passages almost without organic con- des buffons”, which had broken open the the brothers Graun, the brothers Benda and Handelian operatic aria or a baroque Italian nection: having just settled into a cheery, early ritualised and in the meantime petrified forms Hasse mark the transition from the galant age concerto. The first and last movements are classic environment in the introductory move- of the French court opera. The symphony in to the Enlightenment and ‘Sturm und Drang’: in contrast already caught up in ‘Sturm und ment of the D major symphony, one is sud- D major formed the overture festa teatrale and it understandably attracted the young Drang’; there is experimentation and play with denly catapulted for several bars into a contra- “Alcide al Bivio”, which was performed in 1760 generation of musicians to the Berlin court, contrasts, sound colours, effects and above all puntal condensation of the thematic material, for the marriage of the later emperor Joseph whose monarch had committed himself so emotive ploys. Carl Philipp loves to surprise unmistakably indebted to Johann Sebastian. II; Gluck probably gleaned inspiration from it explicitly to modern ideas. (Johann Friedrich the listener: we hear unexpected harmonic for his opera “Orfeo”. Fasch, a friend of Bach senior, at first did not shifts, appoggiatura and embellishments, and Listening habits often alter the response to wish his son to be drawn into this irreligious key changes breaking in. In the B flat major what one considers to be an avant-garde Johann Gottlieb Graun was a violinist and em- milieu; for the deeply devout Lutheran from symphony, the intimate late baroque poco sound; for us, the austere architecture of a ployed in Friedrich’s orchestra as first violinist Buttelstädt it seemed as if his son was taking adagio con sordino is followed by a presto fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach is perhaps and leader. Most of his instrumental works up lodgings in Sodom and Gomorra; he only full of wit and high spirits, sounding almost more radical than music of the pre-classic were written for the royal court concerts. At agreed when Carl Philipp promised he would like musical slapstick, as if it was a matter of era. However, enlightened contemporaries, the start he composed in the Italian style, also especially in France, applauded musicians like French overtures, but soon gave this up, since * This is reported by Carl Friedrich Zelter in his biography of Carl Friedrich Fasch. This and other details of music at the Berlin Hasse as pathfinders of the new music. Frederick did not appreciate the old French court were taken from the “Quellentexte zur Berliner Musikgeschichte im 18. Jahrhundert“. Selection and commentary by Johann Adolph Hasse went to Italy as a young forms. Graun was held in inordinate esteem Christoph Henzel, Berlin 1999. man, later worked in Dresden and Vienna and also as a teacher. 10 11 “In his fifteenth year he was taught the violin and intrigued against his friend Kirnberger in Anna Amalie).