Johann Melchior Molter (1696-1765)
Sinfonia en ré, MWV 7.24
Cantate en sol, MWV 2.26
Concerto en la, MWV 6.13
Sonate à quatre en fa, MWV 9.20
Ouverture en si bémol, MWV 3.7
Cantate en mi bémol, MWV 2.25

Julia Kirchner, soprano
Camerata Bachiensis (instruments d'époques)

Roberto de Franceschi, hautbois, traverso
Anne Kaun, violon
Friederike Lehnert, violon
Magdalena Schenk-Bader, alto
Isolde Winter, violoncelle
Felix Görg, violone
Julia Cmielewska-Ulbrich, clavecin

Johann Melchior Molter est un contemporain de Johann Sebastian Bach influencé par l’œuvre de son ainé Georg Philipp Telemann, il étudie à Rome et à Venise avant de devenir maître de chapelle à la cour du margrave au château de Bade-Durlach (1723), puis à la résidence de Karlsruhe (1741). En 1743, il entre de nouveau au service de la cour de Baden-Durlach, (où il a pu croiser un certain Voltaire). Il y compose de très nombreuses pièces pour un petit orchestre qu'il anime au lycée. En 1746, le comte Carl Friedrich décide de réorganiser la musique de la cour et le charge du projet. De 1747 à sa mort en 1765, il dirige la nouvelle chapelle. Pendant cette période, il compose une grande quantité d’œuvres vocales et instrumentales. Klaus Hafner, musicologue allemand a établi un catalogue des œuvres de Molter (MWV : Molter Werke Verzeichnis) contenant près de 600 compositions. En voici un rapide aperçu (six œuvres sous cinq formes différentes) à travers cette compilation qui reflète bien le style à la fois alerte et galant de la musique profane des restes du Saint-Empire romain germanique du 17ème siècle. (Karim Douedar)

Johann Melchior Molter (1696-1765) was a younger contemporary of J.S. Bach. The two composers were born in small Thuringian towns half a day’s ride away from each other, and then travelled farther afield to make their names in major cities: Bach, south to Leipzig, Molter north to Karlsruhe. The quantity of Molter’s extant music as well as its relative simplicity preclude more detailed comparison with the Kapellmeister of Leipzig, but he deserves to be known for a great deal more than the odd trumpet concerto which has made his name as part of the repertoires of (for example) Maurice Andre, Ludwig Guttler and John Wallace. This album valuably redresses that balance of neglect with historically informed studio recordings of vocal and chamber music which reveal a surprisingly cosmopolitan, vivacious and inventive personality in music. Most of these works are either hitherto unrecorded or long unavailable in any other version. Thus the album is essential listening for Baroque aficionados. The cantatas show the influence of Molter’s three years of study and service in Venice and Rome between 1719 and 1721 when he could have rubbed shoulders with the likes of Vivaldi, Albinoni and Alessandro Scarlatti. Most of his vocal work is known to be lost to us, making these surviving works all the more treasurable. They were evidently written for a highly talented soprano in Karlsruhe, and Molter made full use of her ability to sing long, arching lines over a broad compass and with intense characterisation. Vivaldi and Scarlatti had already set the same texts, but Molter puts his own stamp on them. Interspersed with the three cantatas are an elaborately ornamented A major Flute Concerto, a concertante Sonata for oboe and strings and a suite-like B flat major Overture in the Telemann model with a grand, three-part introduction succeeded by a sequence of dances. They likely date from earlier in Molter’s career, before his move to Karlsruhe, but are distinguished by the galant flourish to be found in the nascent Mannheim school of composers.