classic concert

Johann Christian Schieferdecker Sacred Motets
Dieterich Buxtehude trio sonatas
Felix Schwandtke - bass
Daniel Sepec & Anna Melkonyan - baroque violins
Martha Kneringer - viola
Vittorio Ghielmi - viola da gamba
Peter Waldner - harpsichord, organ positive & direction

The program of this concert takes us to the prosperous North German Hanseatic city of Lübeck, to the imposing Gothic Church of St. Mary. In the second half of the 17th century g
The Abendmusiken, founded by his predecessor Franz Tunder, were the first sacred concerts open to the public in Germany and became a highly respected series of church concerts that attracted audiences from near and far. That Johann Sebastian Bach made a pilgrimage on foot from Arnstadt in Thuringia to Lübeck to hear the almost 70-year-old Buxtehude and to understand and learn one thing and another about his art from him is an undisputed fact; that he - like, incidentally, his contemporary Georg Friedrich Händel - turned down the attractive offer to succeed Buxtehude because the condition for doing so was marriage to the latter's eldest daughter Anna Margaretha is an anecdote colocated by Johann Mattheson. The one who finally got the ball rolling and became Buxtehude's well-placed successor was Johann Christian Schieferdecker. It is very regrettable that only a few of Schieferdecker's compositions have survived, for his music is of exquisite beauty. When first-class musicians take on sacred solo cantatas by Schieferdecker, which Peter Waldner recently discovered in a library in Brussels and had transcribed into a modern score by the Belgian musicologist Gerardus De Swerts, and top-class chamber music by Buxtehude, this insight into Lübeck's flourishing baroque musical culture promises and guarantees many surprises, but above all exquisite listening pleasure.