Reviewed by Steven Whitehead

Joseph Martin Kraus was almost an exact contemporary of Mozart, being born in the same year (1756) and outliving him by just one year, dying in 1792. It would be easy to leave things here and merely point out that Kraus is an interesting composer but no Mozart. However he deserves more. He was taught sacred composition by Georg Peter Weimar, a pupil of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and also by the organist Johann Christian Kittel, one of the last pupils of Johann Sebastian Bach. But by this time interest in Johann Sebastian was on the wane and the language of German music was changing with Latin texts being replaced by German poetry, often on a deeply introspective "Sturm und Drang" nature that was taken to a new level my Beethoven. On this well presented disc we get three sacred works, all settings of traditional Latin texts: Miserere (VB 4), Requiem (VB 1), and Stella Coeli (VB 10). All are workmanlike compositions, perfectly enjoyable in their own rights but none of them close to the heights reached by Mozart or Beethoven. No doubt scholars of the period will find them an interesting comparison and the rest of us will ignore them. For the record the singers of Deutscher Kammerchor and musicians of La Stagione Frankfurt do an excellent job under the direction of Michael Schneider but their undoubted proficiency is unable to overcome the mediocrity of the music.

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