Llewellyn Lepper - Heart & Hereafter - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Dussek / Meniker - Complete Piano Sonatas 7 [COMPACT DISCS] date 06/07/2019

When the cantor Johann Sebastian Bach performed sacred cantatas in Leipzig on Sundays and public holidays, his colleagues did the same in many other places in Lutheran Germany. Among them was Christoph Graupner, the court conductor of Hesse-Darmstadt. In 1709, the music-loving Landgraf Ernst Ludwig from Darmstadt had discovered him as a harpsichordist at the Hamburg Opera in 1709 and had hired him on the spot. The Landgraf had made a real stroke of luck with Graupner, because he was not only an outstanding musician but also a perfect organizer of the courtly musical life and especially for the church music which had to be performed weekly. Over the years, more than 1,400 works of sacred music and many concertos and orchestral works have gathered from his pen and paper. Dorothee Mields and Harmonie Universelle have put together an exquisite selection from this repertoire for the present three cantatas from Graupner's early years as kapellmeister, complemented by two orchestral works. All three cantatas contain InchHerzInch [heart] as a central theme and Graupner has put the sacred texts into music with a never-ending fantasy.

Soprano Robyn Allegra Parton and pianist Simon Lepper perform an album inspired by the burnished gold leaf and sensual contours of Klimt's Art-Nouveau 'Vienna Secession' movement, with music reflecting that aesthetic including songs by Richard Strauss, Alma Mahler, Johanna Müller-Hermann, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alban Berg and Joseph Marx - a composer about whom Lepper recently curated a series at Wigmore Hall. These are works that occupy a fascinating realm between the romantic and the modern, so that sensuous, brooding and dark-hued atmospheres are blended with rich textures and radiant harmonies. Described by Opernwelt as 'captivating, astonishing, overwhelming', award-winning British soprano Robyn Allegra Parton specialises in this repertoire, and Simon Lepper is one of the finest song accompanists in the world.