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

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

Zelenka: Sacred Music - King's Consort (2012)
EAC Rip | Flac (Image + cue + log) | 1 CD | Full Scans | 284 MB
Genre: Classical | Label: Helios | Catalog Number: 55424

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.

Tracklisting:

1. Litaniae de venerabili sacramento, Z 147 by Jan Dismas Zelenka
Performer: Michael George (Bass), Robin Blaze (Countertenor), Carolyn Sampson (Soprano),
James Gilchrist (Tenor)
Conductor: Robert King
Orchestra/Ensemble: King's Consort
Period: Baroque
Written: 1727; Dresden, Germany
Language: Latin

2. Regina coeli laetare, Z 134 by Jan Dismas Zelenka
Performer: Rebecca Outram (Soprano), Robin Blaze (Countertenor), Carolyn Sampson (Soprano)
Conductor: Robert King
Orchestra/Ensemble: King's Consort
Period: Baroque
Written: circa 1726-1727; Dresden, Germany
Language: Latin

3. Salve regina, mater misericordiae, Z 135 by Jan Dismas Zelenka
Performer: Carolyn Sampson (Soprano)
Conductor: Robert King
Orchestra/Ensemble: King's Consort
Period: Baroque
Written: 1730; Dresden, Germany
Language: Latin

4. Officium defunctorum, Z 47: Lectiones (3) by Jan Dismas Zelenka
Performer: Carolyn Sampson (Soprano), James Gilchrist (Tenor), Peter Harvey (Bass)
Conductor: Robert King
Orchestra/Ensemble: King's Consort
Period: Baroque
Written: 1733; Dresden, Germany
Language: Latin

5. Officium defunctorum, Z 47: Invitatorium by Jan Dismas Zelenka
Performer: Robin Blaze (Countertenor)
Conductor: Robert King
Orchestra/Ensemble: King's Consort
Period: Baroque
Written: 1733; Dresden, Germany
Language: Latin

Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011

EAC extraction logfile from 28. September 2013, 18:17

The King's Consort, Robert King / Zelenka - Sacred Music

Used drive : HL-DT-STDVDRAM GSA-4083N Adapter: 1 ID: 0

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 667
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 896 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -V -8 %source%


TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
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1 | 0:00.00 | 1:12.05 | 0 | 5404
2 | 1:12.05 | 1:53.15 | 5405 | 13894
3 | 3:05.20 | 3:43.30 | 13895 | 30649
4 | 6:48.50 | 2:12.23 | 30650 | 40572
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6 | 11:17.06 | 0:52.26 | 50781 | 54706
7 | 12:09.32 | 1:17.12 | 54707 | 60493
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9 | 15:32.40 | 2:38.42 | 69940 | 81831
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12 | 20:53.34 | 3:51.00 | 94009 | 111333
13 | 24:44.34 | 5:25.09 | 111334 | 135717
14 | 30:09.43 | 3:16.72 | 135718 | 150489
15 | 33:26.40 | 4:05.26 | 150490 | 168890
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18 | 43:45.13 | 6:47.00 | 196888 | 227412
19 | 50:32.13 | 5:14.43 | 227413 | 251005
20 | 55:46.56 | 4:59.42 | 251006 | 273472
21 | 60:46.23 | 13:06.03 | 273473 | 332425


Range status and errors

Selected range

Filename J:\New Music\Zelenka - Sacred Music\Zelenka - Sacred Music.wav

Peak level 98.7 %
Extraction speed 2.8 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC BBC2420D
Copy CRC BBC2420D
Copy OK

No errors occurred

End of status report

==== Log checksum 131E89F6C6F269C2A1E751F49FC8131AD17E85C8C5D1F6F0ACF1DC08C89A4249 ====



Thanks to the original releaser