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Zelenka: Sacred Music

Carolyn Sampson, Rebecca Outram (soprano), Robin Blaze (countertenor), James Gilchrist (tenor) & Michael George, Peter Harvey (bass)

Choir of the King's Consort & Kings Consort, Robert King

Performances are sensitive and stylish in ways that we have come to expect from this group

Zelenka: Sacred Music

Carolyn Sampson, Rebecca Outram (soprano), Robin Blaze (countertenor), James Gilchrist (tenor) & Michael George, Peter Harvey (bass)

Choir of the King's Consort & Kings Consort, Robert King

Purchase product

CD

$12.50

In stock - only 1 left: usually despatched within 1 working day

Performances are sensitive and stylish in ways that we have come to expect from this group

About

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.

Contents and tracklist

I. Kyrie I
Track length1:12
II. Kyrie II
Track length1:53
III. Pater de caelis
Track length3:43
IV. Praecelsum et admirabile
Track length2:12
V. Panis omnipotentia
Track length2:16
VI. Spiritualis dulcedo
Track length0:52
VII. Propitius esto
Track length1:17
VIII. Ab indigna corporis
Track length2:05
IX. Peccatores, te rogamus
Track length2:38
X. Fili Dei, te rogamus
Track length0:36
XI. Agnus Dei
Track length2:06
I. Salve regina, mater misericordiae
Track length5:25
II. Ad te clamamus
Track length3:16
III. Eia ergo advocata
Track length4:05
IV. Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui
Track length1:11
V. Ostende, o clemens
Track length5:01
II. Nocturn 1 Lectio 1
Track length6:47
IV. Nocturn 1 Lectio 2
Track length5:14
VI. Nocturn 1 Lectio 3
Track length4:59
I. Invitatorium
Track length13:06

Awards and reviews

Performances are sensitive and stylish in ways that we have come to expect from this group

The performance is outstanding, capturing the startlingly original nature of the piece with singing and playing of such vitality and commitment

Constantly fascinating to listen to. Especially when performed as beautifully and with such evident care and affection as it is on Robert King’s new CD … Zelenka’s curious music could scarcely have better advocacy

A really first-rate release

Robert King with his King’s Consort and Choir directs performances both moving and exhilarating

Daily Telegraph

Robert King and his period forces give performances it would be hard to beat
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