Cantatas for Esterhazys

MARBECKS STAFF PICK: REISSUE CD OF THE YEAR 2009

"Spering and his supreme ensemble delicately reaffirm the great composer's genius for maintaining orchestral grandeur with the lightest of touches and the most elegant of gestures in this superb recording."
- The Observer (11 Aug 2002) Classical CD of the Week

"These obscure cantatas, seldom recorded might seem geared for the Haydn specialist, but the music is so enjoyable, the performances so good, and the sound so exemplary that it can be warmly recommended to anyone interested in vocal music from the mid-18th Century."
- American Record Guide (Sep 2002)

The world premiere recording of three festive cantatas in honour of the Esterházy princes. Never revived since their first performances (in 1763/1764) and composed in relative isolation at the princely court, they display the Vice-Kapellmeister's art to the full. 'There was nobody in my vicinity to confuse and annoy me in my course, and so I had to become original.'(Joseph Haydn)

The date of 8 May 1954 marked the birth of the Cappella Coloniensis, which was brought into existence by what was then the Nordwestdeutsche Rundfunk Köln (North German Radio, Cologne) as an orchestra devoted to historical performance. The Cappella Coloniensis des WDR works or has worked in the past with such conductors as Bruno Weil, William Christie, Joshua Rifkin, Reinhard Goebel, Michael Schneider, Gabriele Ferro, Ferdinand Leitner, Hans-Martin Linde and its founder August Wenzinger. The ensemble is laid out according to the model of the Dresden court orchestra (as it was constituted in the mid-eighteenth century) and concentrates mainly on the pre-classical and classical periods. However, as early as the 1970s and 1980s the orchestra also began to make incursions into nineteenth-century repertoire, with recordings of three Rossini operas which attracted much attention. The Cappella Coloniensis did a great deal of touring in the first twenty years of its existence, but today appears mainly in the WDR transmission area. Since the late 1970s WDR recordings with the Cappella Coloniensis have also been exploited commercially by the record industry.