Zelenka - Trio Sonatas

The Guardian 80

Collegium 1704
(Accent, 2 CDs)

Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745) was just another footnote in the history of 18th-century Czech music when the great oboist Heinz Holliger rediscovered his set of trio sonatas, for two oboes and two bass obligatos, in the early 1970s. The six sonatas, which are substantial and musically complex, were believed have been composed around 1716, at the time of Zelenka’s studies in Vienna with Johann Fux, though now it’s thought more likely they were written in the early 1720s, perhaps for the celebrations for the coronation of Charles VI as king of Bohemia in Prague in 1723.

Holliger’s first recording of the sonatas, released in 1972, rekindled interest in the Bohemian composer, and by the time he recorded them again, 27 years later (for ECM), a Zelenka revival was under way. A number of his orchestral and choral works have subsequently appeared on disc, and there have been several further recordings of the trio sonatas too, mostly using period instruments, when the demands of Zelenka’s woodwind writing become even more formidable than they are on the modern equivalents. Zelenka was clearly writing for players – court musicians, presumably – who were not only technically agile but also possessed great powers of endurance, for he allows them few opportunities to catch their breath. In the third of the sonatas, in B flat major, the first oboe is replaced by a violin. In the fifth, in F major, the bassoon, a constant presence in all the sonatas, gets its chance to shine in an almost concertante way.