Rather known nowadays for being a great organist, and also a copyist of many works from Bach (some of which are only certified by his one and only copied manuscript), Johann Peter Kellner (1705-1772) is one of these very dignified musicians who performed their art in Germany’s small cities, as it happens in Thuringia. Bach’s influence is obviously Kellner’s body of work, and incidentally the man made no secret of that fact! It is said that one day he gave, at the organ, a large improvisation on the notes B-A-C-H, if you needed further proof. The cantatas recorded here, and of whom most are world premieres on disc, date from the 1750s, written as Kellner was no less than the Cantor of… his native village, Gräfenroda, where three thousand five hundred people currently live and is famous for its garden gnome museum. This goes to show that even in the most remote villages in deepest Thuringia, you could brag to have kept a high-level Cantor busy in the middle of the 18th century. The cantatas are all built around one unique canvas: introductive chorus, recitative, aria, terminal choral. In Gräfenroda, Kellner could probably not allow himself too many formal whims, which doesn’t prevent him from developing a highly personal musical language, very narrative. It is worth noting that the many concertante organ solos are performed on the organ that Kellner himself held in the village, built in 1736 and lovingly restored recently. It is the most typical sonority of Eastern Germany that you can imagine. © SM/Qobuz