This album is part of a series recorded live at the medieval-era Maulbronn Monastery in southern Germany, but it explores the music of a very different region: the Hamburger Ratsmusik, doubtless a strange name to Anglophone ears, is the Music of the Hamburg City Council, a concert series with a tradition a half a millennium long. It petered out and was then revived. This concert, conceptualized by gambist and ensemble leader
Simone Eckert, collects a group of pieces from the 18th century, all connected by the single theme of time (die Zeit). There's no particular assertion here that a program of this kind would have been attended by the well-heeled Lutheran merchants of Hamburg, and indeed there's very little documentation at all about the music included. The track list does not even make clear the composer of the two "moralische Kantaten" on the program (it is
Telemann). As an introduction to Hamburg religious music in the 18th century the disc isn't much good, and the texts are given only in German. Even for those who don't speak that language, however, the album is quite listenable. The combination of pieces is largely unlike anything that's been put on disc before, and many of them are unknown. The program combines simple, strophic settings like
Johann Schop's O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort (O Eternity, You Thunder-Word), from the mid-17th century, with
Telemann's simple moralistic cantatas, more involved Bachian pieces, and instrumental works of several kinds. Soprano
Dorothee Mields does an exceptional job of communicating the sober but appealing mood of the music, so different from the operatic ideals that informed even much of the output of
Bach, and the backing musicians keep everything lively even as the emotion level is low-key; the two
Telemann trio sonatas included are nicely differentiated by accompaniment, with one featuring a theorbo continuo. The whole program breathes and feels like a spirited rediscovery of true expression that's centuries old, and the sound from the monastery, not always ideal, is well suited to this music. Recommended, partly in hopes that the album will stimulate further exploration of the repertory from Hamburg, an immensely influential city in its day.