Laut verkünde unsre Freude, K623 - Cantata for soloists, male chorus and orchestra
Die ihr des unermesslichen Weltalls Schöpfer ehrt, K619 - Cantata for tenor and fortepiano
Der Maurerfreude, K 471 - Cantata for tenor, male chorus and orchestra
Lied zur Gesellenreise, K 468
Lobegesang auf die feierliche Johannisloge, K 148
Thamos, König in Ägypten, K345
Dir, Seele des Weltalls, K 429 (468a)
Ihr unsre neuen Leiter, K 484
Zerfliesset heut’, geliebte Brüder, K 483
Meistermusik (Maurerische Trauermusik, K 477)

Following their 11-disc cycle of Mozart’s piano concertos recorded with Ronald Brautigam, Die KölnerAkademieand Michael Alexander Willensin 2017 released a disc with two of Mozart’s best-loved serenades: the Posthorn Serenade and Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The result was warmly received, for instance in the French magazine Classicawhere it was described as ‘a truly attractive disc to chase away the gloom’ and on MusicWeb-International.com: ‘Die KölnerAkademie… demonstrate once again that they are amongst the best groups in the world of period performance’.

Joined by the tenor John Heuzenroeder and the male voices of the Kölner Akademie Choir, the team has now recorded the music that Mozart wrote for performance at Masonic gatherings. Mozart was himself a Mason during the last seven years of his life, and composed a number of songs and cantatas for various occasions. Best-known is probably the Masonic Funeral Music, K 477, heard here in a version –‘Meistermusik’ –devised by the Mozart scholar Philippe Autexierin an attempt to reconstruct the original performance of the piece. Also included are the four orchestral interludes to the play Thamos, Königin Ägypten, fine examples of Mozart’s music in the ‘Sturm und Drang’ tradition. Thamoswas written by the poet and Mason Tobias von Gebler, and parallels have frequently been drawn between it and the more overtly Masonic Magic Flute.

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Recording: December 2016 at the Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal, Cologne, Germany