Theatre of Voices - enTmenschT - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Arvo Volmer - Music for the Theater [COMPACT DISCS] date 04/16/2002

The voice has a central place in Michael Finnissy's output. His is an art of line, of connective lyric movement spun out over a breath; it is also a deeply humanist art, an art in ardent search of human connection, of which the voice, reaching out from the depths of the body into the world around us, is the primal vehicle. Finnissy's work manifests across the decades an abiding concern with the complex nature of this most bodily, most physical, most personal of instruments- what it is to give voice, to vocalize, to speak or sing in different contexts and different ways, private or public, as an individual or as part of a collective. The four works on this recording, spanning forty years, show Finnissian vocality at it's most blazingly intense displays of virtuosity that push mind and body to the limits of their flexibility, reach, stamina and control.

Reinhard Keiser's Kleine theatralische Musik contains arrangements of instrumental versions of opera numbers composed for Hamburg and performed there. With the greatest probability this work involves a collection of Inchtheater musicInch compiled by the composer from his operas written prior to 1718. This work is complemented by further instrumental music as well as cantatas and arias by Keiser. The program covers a spectrum including Keiser's initial years in Hamburg, the period of his greatest success in the second decade of the eighteenth century, and his difficult traveling years following 1719. First, we have performances of works as they exist in their original form in the sources the cantata InchDie bis in den Tod geliebte IrisInch and the InchTheatralische Musik.Inch Second, we have arias and a cantata from an anthology in the Berlin State Library. Third and last, we have interpretations of cantatas that in keeping with the composer's practice were taken over for his own arrangements. Reinhard Keiser is regarded as one of the most important German composers of the Baroque, and his Pomona previously released on cpo offers an ideal introduction to the world of the German-language Baroque opera. This new Keiser once again offers proof of the profound stylistic knowledge and sophisticated instrumental and vocal culture of the ensemble led by Thomas Ihlenfeldt in an optimal reproduction.