Jan Dismas Zelenka

Heinichen’s Mass employs especially the capabilities of the brass to achieve a festive majesty in sound. A four-voiced trumpet choir in combination with the double choir layout lend Zelenka’s Te Deum a festive character. Hans-Christoph Rademann brings choir, orchestra and soloists to their highest level of performance.

Extraordinarily well-written, prodigiously inventive, and relentlessly exciting–these aren’t terms normally used to describe 18th-century Masses, but then there is nothing “normal” about this late work by Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka. Simply put, if you aren’t acquainted with Zelenka (or if you’ve experienced a previous aversion to Masses), when you hear this piece-a substantial and powerful conception, from the first note of the Kyrie to the final chord of the Dona nobis pacem-you will wonder why this composer does not enjoy much greater esteem and popularity with performers, particularly alongside J.S. Bach (his contemporary) and Mozart.

Jan Dismas Zelenka, court composer of August Elector of Saxony in Dresden, is steadily regaining his deserved reputation.In thi snew recording for Pan Classics, the accomplished young British countertenor Alex Potter succeeds in displaying a wide emotional range in selected works for alto solo: he dazzles with astounding virtuosity in the motet 'Barbara, dira effera' and soars in tender arcs of tension in his performance of the 'Christe eleison' from a late unfinished mass. He is accompanied with consummate sensitivity by the Capriccio Barockorchester from Basel who also round off this recording with several of Zelenka s instrumental works.

Under the artistic direction of Matthias Maute, Ensemble Caprice is renowned for its innovative interpretations of baroque music. Centered around Bach’s aria Ich habe genug, this recording of adagios presents choral and orchestral pieces, mostly well-known to the general public, all having one element in common: they are all meditations on the fundamental questions of life and death. Throughout history composers have attempted to express the seemingly endless pain of human suffering through music. All performed on baroque instruments, the examples contained on this recording are among some of the most powerful explorations of this emotional space.

This anniversary has prompted the Berlin Classics label to release a Ludwig Güttler Edition on a scale never offered before. It essentially brings together the whole series of recordings that Ludwig Güttler made with his Virtuosi in the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The history of music in Dresden understandably provides the core repertoire.