Meder / Goldberg Baroque Ensemble / Szadejko - Musica Baltica 7 [CD]

It must have been splendid when the Council was newly elected in Gdansk. Music was played on all organs in St. Mary's Church, and the responsible Kapellmeister had to deliver festive multi-choral works for the occasion. Andrzej Szadejko and his Goldberg Baroque Ensemble convey a fascinating impression of this baroque practice in a spectacular first recording: this album presents works by Johann Valentin Meder, who was Kapellmeister at St. Mary's until 1698, including motets with up to three choirs. Elsewhere, multi-choir singing had long since gone out of fashion, but in Meder's music, this opulent and therefore harmonically mostly simple movement style of earlier times is combined with the highly topical concertante style of the Italian Baroque. This leads to idiosyncratic, extremely attractive results. And Meder was always at the forefront: one of the first operas in German language was written by him. In his motets, too, he skillfully combines dialogue with commentary - particularly impressive in the motet "The infernal serpent". And the two chorale motets "Ach Herr, mich armen Sünder" and "Meine Seele säufzt und stöhnet" point far into the late baroque future in their imaginative and varied treatment of verses. A special highlight of this lavish production: the large, recently reconstructed late baroque Merten-Friese organ on the rood screen of Gdansk's Trinity Church is also used for the three-choir motets. Together with kettledrums, trumpets and trombones, it completes the tonal triangle with the top-class vocal choirs on the right and left, using the full-sounding pedal work - an exciting sound celebration, which can of course be experienced most impressively in three-dimensional reproduction.