The King's Consort, Robert King - Schelle: Sacred Music (2001)

Robert King and The King's Consort have clocked up some important historical and composer-based series for the Hyperion catalogue, but none more rewarding than 'Bach's Contemporaries'. Technically, this has so far only covered Bach's three immediate predecessors at Leipzig: Knüpfer (1633-76 reviewed on page 91 of the June 2000 issue), Kuhnau (1660-1722), and now the middle one of the group, Johann Schelle (1648-1701). It all goes to show how the Leipzig Thomaskantorate regularly attracted the finest composers of each generation and demonstrates to us just how much Bach actually learned from them. Bach got to hear Schelle's music just in time: the library inventory from Bach's first year at Leipzig reports that 'Schelle's Musical Things have been damaged by their use and have become nearly unusable'. Robert King has chosen a wide range of works on which to judge Schelle's art, from the simplicity of the funeral motet Komm, Jesu, komm (1684), to his most ambitious work, Lobe den Herrn for two choirs, soloists, strings, cornettos, sackbuts, four trumpets and timpani. Robin Blaze makes a strong case for the early Wohl dem, a psalm setting for one voice and five-part instrumental ensemble which belongs to a tradition established by Schelle's teacher, Heinrich Schütz. There is some startling word-painting, but it was a technique Schelle soon grew out of as he became more interested in the potential of the chorale. In Herr, lehre uns bedenken the instruments offer a running commentary in the form of apposite hymn quotations between verses. Christus, der ist mein Leben is more atmospheric: four violins and four violas surround the sung chorale refrain with a shimmering halo of sound. The melting duetting of Carolyn Sampson and Rebecca Outram is one of the highlights of the disc. Not much Schelle has been recorded before (he is unrepresented in the current catalogue) and this new issue offers plenty of unknown repertory and a much broader reading of the wonderful Vom Himmel than Musica Fiata managed in their pioneering recording from 1994. I feel unusually evangelical about this new disc. Its riches are thrillingly overt: the music radiates a glowingly optimistic sense of spirituality comparable with the most outgoing of Bach's later cantatas. Simon Heighes