Das Kleine Konzert

When Schumann was offered the post of music director in Düsseldorf in 1850, his first main project was to perform the St. John Passion, which had never been presented there, in April 1851: “It is much bolder, more powerful, and more poetic than the St. Matthew. This one seems to me not to be free of diffuseness and to be exceedingly long, but the other – how compact, how thoroughly genial, and of what art!” Robert Schumann

“Hermann Max has returned to Johann Ludwig three times since making this recording…Yet his later accounts have never really bettered these engaging performances. The choir…sings with lithe sensitivity. The period instrument Das Kleine Konzert is also in top form, as is the quartet of vocalists. Barbara Schlick has her usual sweet brilliance.” Christopher Price (Goldberg Magazine)

“The fact that there is only one other recording of Un’ alma innamorata and no recording at all of the remaining three works on this disc currently in the catalogue would surely be recommendation enough for any lover of Handel’s vocal works. That the music is not only attractive and well crafted but performed so engagingly and with such little artifice makes a purchase almost mandatory. Veronika Winter engages with the texts in a straight-forward though far from strait-laced manner, relying less on histrionics and more on the affecting nature of her full and gorgeously affecting soprano voice…The fine recorded sound, bright and clear, is the icing on the cake of this laudable release.” Robert Levett, International Record Review