In one of its most famous concert series, “Church Holidays in St. Mary's Land”, Corelli Music will introduce to the entire cultural Europe “St. Matthew Passion”, a masterpiece by Johann Valentin Meder (1649-1719), a baroque composer who served as a cantor in Tallinn and wrote one of the first German operas here.

Contemporary musicians from Tallinn will present this historical musical composition that is considered to be one of the most noteworthy pre-Bach oratorios on the Passion of Christ motif in musical literature.
 
The concerts will take place before the Holy Week, during Lent, in St. John`s Church in Tartu on 30 March and in St. John`s Church in Tallinn on 31 March. Performers will include Tõnis Kaumann (Evangelist, baritone), Uku Joller (Jesus, bass-baritone), Kädy Plaas (soprano), Studio Vocale and the Tallinn Baroque Orchestra, conducted by Toomas Siitan.

In the summer of 2010, the same performers also presented the composition in Haapsalu and Corelli Music will now bring this beautiful music to the audiences in Tartu and Tallinn. It is historically known that such Passion oratorios were mostly composed in merchant towns near the Baltic Sea: the fact that traces of contemporary music can be found in even the most conservative church music proves that the Baltic Sea region was more open to the influence of the world.

Tallinn and Tartu, the towns where “St. Matthew Passion” will soon be presented again, and Riga, the place where this masterpiece was composed in 1701, all belonged among the Hansa towns.

The “Church Holidays in St. Mary`s Land” concert series was first established during the Holy Week in 2006. The main purpose of the series is to regularly offer the audience an opportunity to enjoy beautiful music that has been composed for specific church holidays.

Music is performed in a church, the spiritual and acoustic atmosphere of which the composers have kept in mind while composing, in order for the wonderful message of the music to reach the audience in the purest possible way. This beautiful idea has been well-received by the audience.  Such tradition of church concerts has been evident in cultural Europe for decades and thanks to the active work of Corelli Music, this tradition has also started to emerge in Estonia.

The fact that such major compositions are performed in churches during church holidays not only offers the audience beautiful musical experiences but also deep spiritual and ethical values. The patron of the concert series is Andres Põder, the Archbishop of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church, who will open the concerts in Tallinn with a speech.

Corelli Music agency`s next projects in the European Capital of Culture Tallinn 2011 programme include the „Towers of Tallinn“ festival in August and the season opening concerts called “Musical Salon in Toompea”, along with exciting surprises, in September.

More information: www.corelli.ee

JOHANN VALENTIN MEDER
 
Johann Valentin Meder (1649–1719) was one of the most noteworthy masters in the generations between of Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach. He managed to creatively combine Italian and German musical traditions. He was born in Thuringia in a family of church musicians – his father and four older brothers worked as cantors or organists. However, he was not only a very productive church musician but also one of the first opera composers in German music.

In 1674-1683 he worked as a cantor in Gymnasium Revaliense  (now Gustav Adolf Gymnasium) where he composed his first opera „Die bestandige Argenia“ (1680). In those times, combining church and opera music was unusual in Lutheran cultural world because opera was characteristic to Catholic Italy, which 17th-century Lutherans were opposed to rather strongly. Meder, on the other hand, was familiar with the musical style of several Italian masters (Cesti, Carissimi) and imitated it creatively in different musical genres.

After leaving Tallinn, Meder worked in Gdańsk and Riga. Unfortunately, only a very small part of his impressive list of compositions (12 Masses, 5 Magnificats, 4 Passions, a number of concert motets) has been preserved. But just like his only opera that has still preserved has a key role in the birth of German opera, the Passion oratorio he composed in Riga in 1701 is also one of the most noteworthy compositions before the Passions of Johann Sebastian Bach.