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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.

We badly need a complete set of Zelenka's orchestra works, as Arkiv's edition has long vanished into the remainder bins, and this one (previously issued as three separate CDs) fits the bill nicely. Although the players use "authentic instruments", their sound is comparatively warm and gentle, though this doesn't mean that they don't handle with aplomb the insanely virtuosic horn parts in the Capriccios, or the bubbling wind writing in the Concerto. The inclusion of the overture from Melodrama de S. Wenceslao makes an interesting bonus, with its fascinating opposition of simultaneous duple and triple rhythms.

Valentin Rathgeber was a very successful composer in Germany in the first half on the 18th century. He was born in Fulda and studied theology in Würzburg where he also became a schoolmaster and an organist. In 1707 he entered the monastery at Banz as a chamber musician, and there he was ordained in 1711. In the same year he was appointed choirmaster, a post he held until his death. As a composer he concentrated on writing sacred music for churches which couldn't afford professional singers and players. His music is melodious and technically not very demanding. This was the main reason it became very popular throughout Germany.

This truly international ensemble drawn from Japan, Germany and the USA discloses a Newly Planted Thuringian Pleasure Garden virtually unknown on disc. Johann Rudolf Able (1625-73) worked at St Blasius Church in Muhlhausen (a predecessor there of JS Bach), but his stylistic lineage is clearly from Venice and Gabrieli, via Schiitz. Into his ‘garden’ Ahle ‘transplanted… new spiritual musical plants with three to ten and more parts’. The selection here uses four lucid voices, a cornetto and four trombones, a pair of violins and continue organ.

In the ’70s, David Bowie looked to Europe for the future of rock. He found Can, Cluster, Popol Vuh and Michael Rother – just four of the 15 artists on this mind-altering compilation. Vorwärts!