Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Psalms and Motets

The Thomanerchor Leipzig (St Thomas’s Boys Choir) and the Gewandhausorchester (Gewandhaus Orchestra) perform rarities from the sacred oeuvre of the renowned Leipzig composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Mendelssohn himself apostrophised his choral-symphonic setting of Psalm 42, Wie der Hirsch schreit nach frischem Wasser, as his “very best master-piece”. In addition Georg Christoph Biller, cantor at St Thomas, combines the fragment of the composer’s Christus oratorio with his Sechs Sprüche, op 79. In performance, both regarding content and emotion, these disparate fragments become a unified work of convincing force.

The Christus oratorio which Mendelssohn started work on in 1847 was supposed to complete a triology: the first two parts of which, Paulus and Elias, are seminal works of 19th century choral music. Because of Mendelssohn’s early and unexpected death in November 1847, this oratorio, however, remained a fragment.

Christine Wolff
Martin Petzold
Ensemble amarcord
Thomanerchor Leipzig
Gewandhausorchester
Thomaskantor Georg Christoph Biller