Georg Philipp Telemann, he of the prolific pen, composed no fewer than 46 passion settings, of which 12 involved the Passion According to St. Mark. Obviously they weren't one-of-a-kind works like Bach's Passion settings, and not all of them have survived. This Markus-Passion of 1755 shows the chief virtue of Telemann's music, for us as well as for the HR people of his own time who kept thinking he was superior to Bach: he managed to keep on the cutting edge for a good long time. Telemann's light, proto-Classical language of ...
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Georg Philipp Telemann, he of the prolific pen, composed no fewer than 46 passion settings, of which 12 involved the Passion According to St. Mark. Obviously they weren't one-of-a-kind works like Bach's Passion settings, and not all of them have survived. This Markus-Passion of 1755 shows the chief virtue of Telemann's music, for us as well as for the HR people of his own time who kept thinking he was superior to Bach: he managed to keep on the cutting edge for a good long time. Telemann's light, proto-Classical language of the 1750s matches the intentions of the unknown poet who provided him with this text here: after an opening chorale, we hear Jesus cheerily exhorting a crowd to "sing with me a joyful Alleluia in God's honor." (One word of warning on this basically specialist release: the texts and liner notes are exclusively in German.) The other arias have nowhere near the killer mixture of faith and operatic drama that Bach brought to the central texts of Christianity, but Telemann is inventive...
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