A Wealth of Pleasant Sound: Kammerchor Bad Homburg

A quote from Thomas Mann’s Zauberberg stands in as motto for the present CD recorded by the women of the Kammerchor Bad Homburg: ‘Die Fülle des Wohllautes’ (‘A Wealth of Pleasant Sound’) is not only the disc’s title, but at the same time describes the sonorous diversity of Romantic music for women’s choir.

Susanne Rohn, cantor at the Erlöserkirche in Bad Homburg, underlines the colourful stylistic flexibility of the roughly 30 female voices with this selection of works by Josef Gabriel Rheinberger, Gustav Holst, and Johannes Brahms. The discs covers repertoire from the inward, plain performance of Rheinberger’s sacred music to the dense, rich sounds of Brahms’s secular Lieder, romances, and songs. Gustav Holst’s Choral Hymns of the Rig Veda bridge the gap between Rheinsberger and Brahms.

The women’s choir performs in various settings, and joins forces with renowned female instrumental musicians: Annegret Kleindopf accompanies Rheinberger’s Mass at the Sauer-Organ. The two horn players Gerda Wind-Sperlich and Sibylle Mahi lead the way with Romantic horn sounds in Brahms’s work, and Anne-Sophie Bertrand, principle harpist with the hr-Sinfonieorchester, adds a light touch to Holst’s miniatures Spring and Summer.

A cappella and with accompaniment: here with the organ, there with the harp, with organ and harp, and even with the charming combination of two horns and a harp—as multifaceted as the tone colours on this CD may be, they all share one common feature: their performing forces, from the choir, its direction, the organist and harpist, to the horn players, are made up entirely of women. The result is a wealth of pleasant sound.

Kammerchor Bad Homburg
Susanne Rohn