It's Wolf: but it's not Hugo. This is Ernst Wilhelm Wolf (1735-1792), a contemporary of Haydn, and a friend, mentor and colleague to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and this is the first ever recording of his Passion Oratorio Jesu, deine Passion will ich jetzt bedenken from 1756. "Passion Oratorio" and not the Passion according to this or that Evangelist, because Wolf has produced a text which doesn't follow any one Gospel in particular, but is instead made up of commentaries, reflections and quasi-philosophical digressions about the Passion and death of Christ. There are few recitatives, few chorales (and those are deliberately simple, probably because they were meant to be sung by the congregation), a lot of arias, duets and very complex choirs which are very rich in images, because in the middle of this musical period known as "Empfindsamkeit" ("Sensitive"), Wolf is making use of an impressive instrumental, vocal, thematic and harmonic palette. This isn't pure baroque language, and neither classicism nor Sturm und Drang are yet underway. This is a fascinating work, and a fundamental rediscovery which represents a kind of missing link between all these periods, with as many borrowings from religious music as from opera. © SM/Qobuz