Weser-Renaissance, directed by Manfred Cordes
70:26
cpo 555 078-2
He may have been Holy Roman Emperor but, when listening to this music, we hear a heart-broken man outpouring the unimaginable grief of losing not one but two wives; the former perhaps even his true love, the tragedy made even worse by the fact that she was carrying his unborn son. The Requiem for the Empress Margareta of 1673 is a stunning work in the typical 17th-century patchwork style; each verse of the text is treated differently, and the composer gave himself lots of options by employing muted trumpets and cornetti as well as trombones and strings. The musical architecture of the three Lectiones he wrote three years later for his second wife, Claudia Felicia, was largely dictated by the texts, but even here he creates a clever design whereby the first and third are similar and the second one different from both. This excellent CD is completed by his motet for the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was a major event in the Hapsburg liturgical calendar. The recording was made in 2016 after a festival celebrating the Emperor’s music and it is evident that the performers have been immersed in it – the six singers and 15 instrumentalists (including Jörg Jacobi, author of the booklet note and editor of the music, on organ) give fabulous accounts of this emotionally charged music.
That booklet note should have been copy edited; it presumably started life as a concert programme when the music was performed in a different order… I would also respectfully suggest to Jörg Jacobi that the reason that the separate sections are listed of larger works in the Distinta specificatione is exactly because of the document’s function: it describes the forces required to perform works in the Imperial library.
Brian Clark