JOSEPH MARTIN KRAUS (1756-1792): Overture and Ballet Music from Olympia, Cantatas: La Scusa, La Primavera, La Gelosia, La Pesca.

Description: Everyone who owns a bunch of Kraus recordings keeps thinking "this guy was as good as Mozart", and each new acquisition usually adds more evidence to that surmise. This one will pile on vocal evidence too: first recordings of four cantatas to texts by Metastasio, written over the last 15 years of Kraus' life, for the soprano Lovisa Augusti. La Gelosia's virtuosity and emotional intensity is astounding; La Primavera is an amazing musical joke - a send-up of then-prevailing Italian dramatic style... Wonders upon wonders! Italian-German texts. Simone Kermes (soprano), L'Arte del Mondo; Werner Ehrhardt. SACD hybrid.