Early Music (May 2007)

Moving back to the previous century, a cry out of the dephts comes from bass singer Peter Kooij with L'Armonia Sonora, directed by Mieneke van der Velden, in De profundis clamavi, an album of 17-century German sacred cantatas by Matthias Weckmann, Johann Christoph Bach, Nicolaus Bruhns, Christian Geist and Benedictus Buns (a Sancto Josepho), interpolated with instrumental music by Biber and Schmelzer. The type of cantata (or, properly, geistliches Konzert) preseted here stands at a pivotal moment in the struggle between the stile antico in the German-speaking lands, resulting in a rich mixture of stylistic influences in the production of new music for Protestant devotion. Kooij makes a strong case for the dramatic scope of each work, alternating the powerful rhetoric of simple declamation with melismatic sections that are unashamedly elaborate. The thick accompanying string texture heightens the sense of piety — with messe di voce pushing dissonances to their extremities before resolution — at poignant moments in the texts, wich are drawn variously from the Psalms and the Gospels. Of the instrumental music, Scmelzer's Lamento sopra la morte Ferdinand III is executed with particular beauty. This is a disc for self-reflection, and an ideal antidote to the vagaries of the 21st century.