Lacrimae / Jan Dismas Zelenka - CD

This recording brings together Jan Dismas Zelenka’s outstanding liturgical works for bass, performed by the distinctive bass voice of Tomáš Šelc with Collegium Marianum, led by Jana Semerádová. Šelc works across eighteenth- to twentieth-century cantatas and oratorios, Romantic song and opera, but in the music of Zelenka and J. S. Bach he seems to have found his most natural artistic home. The album presents three of Zelenka’s major liturgical compositions for bass, written for the Dresden court ensemble over seven years: the solemn and oppressive atmosphere of the First Lamentation of Jeremiah for the Wednesday of Holy Week (1722), the dignified praise of the Lord in Confitebor tibi Domine (1729), and the pleading voice from the world’s vale of tears in the Marian antiphon Salve Regina (1724). Giuseppe Tartini’s G major flute concerto offers a contrasting note of consolation in Jana Semerádová’s gentle, colourful flute playing. The programme includes Zelenka’s Lamentation I, Confitebor tibi Domine and Salve Regina, together with Tartini’s concerto for flute and orchestra. Salve Regina appears here on CD for the first time.