Heinrich Poos

A portrait of the choral music of Heinrich Poos. As a composer he was known mainly for his vocal works, as a scholar for studies of music from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The disc gathers five works for choir, from a Magnificat with soprano solo to a choral symphony for up to sixteen voices and a cycle for male choir and piano duet. It is sung by a Polish and a German ensemble.

Poos was a German composer, born in Seibersbach in the Hunsrück on 25 December 1928, who died on 19 August 2020. In Berlin he studied church music, mathematics, musicology, philosophy and theology, and took composition lessons with Ernst Pepping. In 1964 he wrote his doctorate on Pepping's Goethe song cycle for choir. From 1971 to 1994 he was professor of music theory at the Berlin Hochschule der Künste. He edited the two-volume Chormusik und Analyse. The Polish Chamber Choir Schola Cantorum Gedanensis sings under Jan Łukaszewski, with Wiesława Łukaszewska as soprano soloist. With it appears the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart under Marinus Voorberg, with Susan Wenckus and Hans-Jörg Kalmbach at the piano.

The Magnificat is written for five-part mixed choir and solo soprano. Sphragis, subtitled "Orphei Commemoratio", is a remembrance of Orpheus for six-part choir a cappella. Nachklänge is a cycle after poems by Joseph von Eichendorff for four to six voices. Its eight songs run from "Klang um Klang" and "Nachtgruß" to "Der traurige Jäger", "Der Kehraus" and an epilogue, "Der Soldat". Hypostasis vel Somnium Jacob (Jacob's Dream) is called a symphony for six- to sixteen-part choir a cappella. Its seven sections run from Prologus and Visio through Promissio, Memoria and Actio to Votum and Oraculum. Zeichen am Weg (Signs along the Way) consists of six miniatures for male choir and piano four hands. Their titles include "Die Maske des Bösen", "Vergänglichkeit", "Brunnen", "6. August" and a "Lamento".

The texts move between Latin liturgy, Greek myth, the biblical story of Jacob and German Romantic poetry. The label calls the disc an intimate look into Poos's many-sided work for choir. Poos's own experience as a singer in the Spandauer Kantorei under Gottfried Grote was, according to Schott, one of the starting points of his work as a composer. In 1987 he received the Federal Cross of Merit.

CD, Wergo WER 6635 2, released in 1998, total time 70'36".