Weckmann: Sacred Concerti & Harpsichord Music

The Purcell Quartet are joined by a quartet of leading vocal soloists for this long-awaited disc of Weckmann’s Sacred concerti and harpsichord music.

Following the enormous success of their Lutheran Mass disc, The Purcell Quartet here perform a fascinating selection of Weckmann’s works including the premiere recording of the two Partitas.

A Thuringian by birth, Wekmann became a pupil of Schütz in 1630 and then of Sweelinck’s pupil Jacob Praetorius in 1633. After serving in various capacities in Dresden and Denmark, he was appointed organist at the Jacobskirche in Hamburg, where he remained until the end of his life.

The relatively small number of Weckmann’s works that survive are of very high quality and show exceptional stylistic versatility, no doubt in part due to the lifelong contact he maintained with major composers, such as Froberger and Schütz, from all parts of Germany

In 1663 an epidemic of the plague broke out in Hamburg, killing many of its inhabitants. (Weckmann went as far as writing a motet for his own funeral.) The calamity of 1663 inspired Weckmann to compose four masterly sacred concertos, which survive in a largely autograph volume in Lüneberg. Three are recorded here – the fourth ‘Herr, wenn ich nur dich habe’ is crossed out in the manuscript.

For his texts Weckmann makes no use at all of hymns or free verse, turning directly to the bible itself. The settings are neither through-composed like motets nor divided into separate movements like the eighteenth-century cantata. They are rather sectional but continuous, the formal design being in each case sui generis and entirely determined by the text. Freely declaimed monodies contrast with triple-time arias and with concertato or imitative passages in which the whole vocal and instrumental ensemble comes together

Weckmann: Sacred Concerti & Harpsichord Music

Stephen Varcoe

Paul Agnew

Robert Woolley

Susan Gritton

Julian Podger

Purcell Quartet

St Bartholemews Church, Orford, Suffolk

Martin Compton

Anthony Howell

Julian Millard

Harpsichord

Sacred Concerti and Harpsichord Music

MATTHIAS WECKMANN

Wie liegt die Stadt so wüste*

Toccata IV†

Partita III†

Zion spricht, der Herr hat mich verlassen‡

Toccata dal 12 tuono V†

Partita II†

Weine nicht, es hat überwunden§