Wr Bremen/Cordes - Georg Caspar Sch�rmann: Music from Wolfenb�ttel Castle, Vol. 4

The fifth concert in our series of 'Music from Wolfenb�ttel Castle' features performances and recordings of multifaceted cantatas by Georg Caspar Sch�rmann. Like no other musician before him, Sch�rmann exercised a comprehensive influence on the Wolfenb�ttel court music world during his more than fifty years of service there. During these decades he produced an impressively extensive and richly varied oeuvre: almost thirty operas, numerous table compositions, a Passion, and various church cantatas for large ensembles are documented. In his Christmas cantata 'Siehe, eine Jungfrau ist schwanger' we experience Sch�rmann as a composer of gripping ensemble compositions with finely chiseled fugue subjects. For many years the anonymous New Year�s cantata 'Nimm das Opfer unsrer Hertzen' was also ascribed to Sch�rmann. Although Georg �sterreich is now assumed to have been its composer, the opening aria in particular with its highly effective postponement of the resolution of dissonances displays a clear stylistic closeness to Sch�rmann�s opera arias from this time.