Bach,J.S. / Eidinger,Lars / Eidinger,Ulrike - J.s. Bach: Markus-passion - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Brahms / Cleveland Orch / Szell/ Serkin - Piano Cto No 1 / S [COMPACT DISCS] date 12/16/2009

Bach's lost St Mark Passion was first performed in Leipzig on Good Friday 1731 and a second time in 1744 in a revised version. Though Bach's music is lost, the libretto by Picander is still extant, and from this, the work can to some degree be reconstructed. Unlike Bach's earlier existing passions (St John Passion and St Matthew Passion), the Markus-Passion is probably a parody - it recycles previous works. Which of his own works Bach may have taken for his St Mark Passion led to numerous speculations. Differently from further reconstructions the Frankfurt musicologist Prof. Karl Böhmer used the revised Picander text from 1744 which schedules one Aria and a chorale more than the 1731 version. Other parts have been revised and complemented. The recitative parts and the choruses for the crowd are not anymore reconstructable and Felix Koch with his Gutenberg Chamber Choir and the Neumeyer Consort foregoes wild speculations or new compositions. These parts are spoken by Wolfgang Vater after the revised Picander version from 1744.

Johann Sebastiani's name no doubt will be familiar only to a few certified music experts. Born in Weimar in 1622, Sebastiani spent a good many years of his life in Konigsberg, where he arrived around 1650 and later was appointed court chapel master. He composed countless occasional works as well as a St. Matthew Passion (1672) - a welcome addition to our picture of Lutheran church music and a work closing a gap in the history of Passion settings between Heinrich Schutz and Johann Sebastian Bach. Stephen Stubbs, Paul O'Dette, and their Boston Early Music Festival Chamber & Vocal Ensemble have fond memories of Bremen, where they have recorded in the radio broadcast hall on various occasions and produced Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Baroque opera La Descente d'Orphée aux Enfers, for which they won a Grammy Award in 2015. Their current featuring Johann Sebastiani's St. Matthew Passion pays tribute to Konigsberg's music culture and to the composer who was one of it's central representatives.