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
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
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
- Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Rebecca Outram (soprano), Robin Blaze (countertenor)
- King's Consort
- Robert King
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




