Zelenka: Sacred Music - King's Consort (2012)

×

Zelenka: Sacred Music - King's Consort (2012)

Close

Czech-born Jan Dismas Zelenka was by all accounts one of Baroque music’s trickier customers—fervently religious but completely lacking in courtly graces. Combine this with a tendency to throw out the rulebook when it came to harmonic convention and it’s hardly surprising that he was underappreciated in his lifetime. Yet here is some of the most pungently exciting writing of the Baroque, as individual as that of his near-contemporary, Johann Sebastian Bach. The very opening of Zelenka’s Litaniae sets out his stall and Robert King and his eponymous Consort make the most of its startling qualities. But he is a composer to tug at the heartstrings too, nowhere more so than in the Salve regina, ravishingly sung by a young Carolyn Sampson.

Composer: Jan Dismas Zelenka
Performer: Michael George, Robin Blaze, Carolyn Sampson, James Gilchrist, …
Conductor: Robert King
Orchestra/Ensemble: King's Consort

Reviews: The Litaniae de Venerabili Sacramento was completed in 1727 for a Corpus Christi procession that was performed in the Saxon court’s Catholic church, so as not to anger the largely Protestant public. It is a work that packs great textural variety and contrapuntal ingenuity into a relatively short time. Passing dissonances between the vocal parts (Kyrie I) add to the theatrical character of the music, which never misses a sudden shift of tone to vary the emotional effect ( Praecelsum et admirabile ; the contrasts of mood and pacing between chorus and soloists in Peccatores, te rogamus ). Zelenka’s deftly smiling Regina caeli laetare (pre-1728) is a Marian antiphon in augmented movement on three high voices, against a quickly walking bass line. The two sopranos and countertenors engage in a mix of three-part harmony to excellent effect. The five-movement Salve Regina, mater misericordiae of 1730 is actually an arrangement by Zelenka of an anonymous work he first copied in 1719. The scoring is attractive, but the piece as a whole lacks the distinctive style of the composer.


Four excerpts from the Officium defunctorum conclude the disc. Composed in 1733, its 19 movements comprise a stark Invitatorium followed by nine pairs of Lessons and Responses. The entire work is available with Václav Luks directing the Collegium Vocale (Accent 24244), and it furnishes strong enough competition to make that recording mandatory, if you enjoy what King does in this one. The soloists are pretty much a wash, but Luks takes a considerably faster pace than King in the Invitatorium and second Lesson, along with stronger accents and a more theatrical approach to the text’s interpretation.


Five out of six of the soloists are excellent, with fine enunciation and agility, and firm tone. I am no more convinced by Michael George’s tight, congested sound in the Litaniae , however, than I was in the Philip Pickett recording (Decca 473713) of Blow’s Venus and Adonis . Robert King shapes the music carefully, bringing out its contrasts and intense lyricism with a subtle touch. Textures are always transparent, and due attention paid to expressive variety. With excellent timings, and a fetching new budget price, this reissue is very welcome.