Epiphany Cantatas

The uncommonly productive Christoph Graupner composed the five Epiphany cantatas selected for this recording between 1730 and December 1753, when he was no longer practicing the art of opera composition. The words were written by his brother-in-law, the Darmstadt pastor and superintendent Johann Conrad Lichtenberg. Lichtenberg was an extremely voluminous writer who turned out some 1500 cantata texts between 1719 and 1743, all imaginatively set to music by Graupner. The choice of cantatas for this recording was governed by two guiding principles: the subject matter of the Epiphany period, and their remarkable instrumentation, which exemplifies the wide range of timbres in Graupner's music. Particularly in the arias he succeeded in displaying the musical potential of the instruments without neglecting the human voice. Founded by Kominik Worner in 2008, the Kirchheim BachConsort consists of leading musicians from the early music scene who appear in solo formations to study and perform programmes of 18th century music.