DITTERSDORF: Giob

Das Kleine Konzert, Max, Hermann, Rheinische Kantorei

CPO 999790

Few German composers in the 18th century were privileged to enjoy the favor of the Prussian king in Berlin at the same time as the emperor in Vienna. One of the few who succeeded in doing so was Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, who must be considered Joseph Haydn's most serious competitor from the 1760s until about 1790.
His fame was based less on instrumental works, which one still encounters from time to time today, than on his two great oratorios Esther (1773) and Job (1786). Job - in the original Italian Giob - was performed to great acclaim in both Vienna and Berlin, and it is completely incomprehensible that this great work, which need fear no comparison with Haydn's two oratorios and also clearly influenced Mozart, has been all but forgotten to this day. Highly virtuosic arias and ensembles and large-scale, dramatic choruses show Dittersdorf, who is often disparagingly characterized in the literature as shallow and superficial, to be a very great master and make contemporary appreciation understandable. It is once again Hermann Max who, with the Rheinische Kantorei and the Little Concert, has succeeded in an honorable rescue and at the same time exemplary realization. Markus Schäfer, Romelia Lichtenstein, Linda Perillo, and others set the soloistic highlights.

CD

18.11.2005

761203979028