Jan Dismas Zelenka

Jan Dismas Zelenka (16 October 1679, Louňovice pod Blaníkem, Bohemia - 23 December 1745, Dresden, Saxony), baptised Jan Lukáš Zelenka and previously also known as Johann Dismas Zelenka, was the most important Czech Baroque composer, whose music was notably daring with outstanding harmonic invention and mastery of counterpoint.

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.

It was a good idea to combine works by these two composers of the Vivaldi period who both worked in Dresden; the resulting CD is of high quality musically and also from the scholarly viewpoint. The performances by the Freiburg orchestra on period instruments are very fine and the recording excellent. Lovers of the Baroque should investigate this disc, on which much scholarly and musical effort has been expended.
HC Robbins Landon, BBC Music Magazine

Jan Dismas Zelenka - 6 Sonate a due Hautbois et Basson
Dombrecht, Ponseele, Banchini, Ebbinge, Bond, Meer, Kohnen
EAC+LOG+CUE | WV: 559 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Accent # ACC30048 | Country/Year: Europe 2004, 1988
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

An innovative Baroque composer whose reputation was steadily on the rise during the anything-goes years of the waning twentieth century, Jan Dismas Zelenka was born in Lounovice, Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic). He was a court musician in Dresden for most of his career, and both J.S. Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann knew and admired his music. Except for brief periods of travel, during which he refined his craft (he took lessons from Fux and Lotti even after his own technique had been perfected), he served as a double bass player in the court orchestra and later aided the ailing court music director Heinichen in his duties…

Jan Dismas Zelenka - 6 Sonate a due Hautbois et Basson
Dombrecht, Ponseele, Banchini, Ebbinge, Bond, Meer, Kohnen
EAC+LOG+CUE | WV: 559 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Accent # ACC30048 | Country/Year: Europe 2004, 1988
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

An innovative Baroque composer whose reputation was steadily on the rise during the anything-goes years of the waning twentieth century, Jan Dismas Zelenka was born in Lounovice, Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic). He was a court musician in Dresden for most of his career, and both J.S. Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann knew and admired his music. Except for brief periods of travel, during which he refined his craft (he took lessons from Fux and Lotti even after his own technique had been perfected), he served as a double bass player in the court orchestra and later aided the ailing court music director Heinichen in his duties…

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.

Jan Dismas Zelenka - Complete Orchestral Works
Das Neu-Eröffnete Orchestre - Jürgen Sonnentheil
EAC+LOG+CUE | WV: 266+287+292 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: CPO # 999 897-2 | Country/Year: Germany 2002
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

…If you haven’t heard this music, let’s just say that Zelenka wrote some of the most enjoyable and colorful music of the Baroque era, and he is supremely well served by CPO’s engineers, conductor Sonnentheil, and his New-Eröffnete Orchestre.