Zelenka Il Diamante Ensemble Inégal

Two years after her recording of Mozart's piano concertos KV 271 and KV 459, Olga Pashchenko returns to the Il Gardellino ensemble for the concertos KV 466 and KV 488. KV 466 is in D minor, a key that Mozart often uses to express the anger of his female characters in his operas. KV 488 was composed a year later in 1786 and is in the luminous key of A major, although without losing any of the theatrical dynamism of KV 466. They represent an almost dramatic, pre-Romantic theatricality for Nicolas Derny, who sees these concertos as the precursors of two of Mozart's greatest masterpieces: the Requiem and Le nozze di Figaro. Olga Pashchenko here plays a replica of an Anton Walter fortepiano (ca. 1792) built by Paul McNulty.

Two years after her recording of Mozart's piano concertos KV 271 and KV 459, Olga Pashchenko returns to the Il Gardellino ensemble for the concertos KV 466 and KV 488. KV 466 is in D minor, a key that Mozart often uses to express the anger of his female characters in his operas. KV 488 was composed a year later in 1786 and is in the luminous key of A major, although without losing any of the theatrical dynamism of KV 466. They represent an almost dramatic, pre-Romantic theatricality for Nicolas Derny, who sees these concertos as the precursors of two of Mozart's greatest masterpieces: the Requiem and Le nozze di Figaro. Olga Pashchenko here plays a replica of an Anton Walter fortepiano (ca. 1792) built by Paul McNulty.

Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745) is one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of Baroque music. Very little is known of his early years, where he studied and who taught him. Born in a village to the south of Prague, he later travelled to Dresden where he joined the court of the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich August I. His position at the court was a lowly one, but he nonetheless composed many works there and his output of church music was particularly prolific.

Zelenka was a Bohemian contemporary of Bach, Handel and Telemann. He held a post as court musician at Dresden from 1710 until his death in 1745; but he travelled, too, and studied in Vienna with Fux, and also in Italy. These six trio sonatas are the only known chamber ensemble pieces by Zelenka, though he contributed a canon with 14 inversions to Telemann's periodical, Der getreue Music-Meister (1728–9). In five of the six sonatas Zelenka specifies two oboes and bassoon with two obbligato basses whilst in the remaining Sonata (No. 3) he requires the first oboe to be replaced by a violin. Zelenka's ''two obbligato basses'' have bewildered editors in the past.

Bohemian composer Jan Dismas Zelenka is a strong candidate for the greatest rediscovery of the Baroque revival. He worked for most of his career in Dresden (the booklet, in French and English, goes into a great deal of detail about the political determinants and musical implications of this fact), and Bach, who didn't admire many composers, admired him. Each new Zelenka work that emerges, if competently performed, seems to astonish, and I Penitenti al Sepolchro del Redentore, ZWV 63 (The Penitents at the Sepulchre of the Redeemer), composed late in Zelenka's career in 1736, is no exception. The work is a bit hard to get a grip on because of its odd genre. Annotator Vacláv Luks calls it a "sepolcro oratorio": it is a little religious semi-drama based on the idea that biblical figures, who may not (as in this case) actually meet in the Bible at all, gather at Christ's tomb and contemplate his divine mysteries.

Bach's setting of the Magnificat is one of his most often-recorded vocal works; as a rule, it's paired with one of Bach's lavishly scored festal cantatas. (The Easter Oratorio seems to be a current favorite.) Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan had a different idea: they've paired Bach's Magnificat with roughly contemporary settings by Johann Kuhnau, who was Bach's immediate predecessor in Leipzig, and Jan Dismas Zelenka, who was a composer at the court of Saxony in Dresden. Zelenka is an interesting composer, among the most underrated of the Baroque era. His writing is less dense and intricate than Bach's–at times it looks forward to the simpler, more elegant style of Haydn and C.P.E. Bach. Zelenka knew his counterpoint, however, and was fond of slipping the occasional surprising chord change into his music.