Xenia Löffler / Anna Prohaska / Collegium 1704 / Václav Luks JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Oboe Concertos & Cantatas

After the very successful album with the B minor Mass according to the Rheinische Post, the most beautiful recording of this work currently in existence Vaclav Luks and his Collegium 1704 ensemble return to Johann Sebastian Bach. Joined by Xenia Loffler, the solo oboist of AKAMUS Berlin, and the renowned soprano Anna Prohaska, Luks presents a deluxe setup for a programme of concertos and cantatas in which the oboe plays a prominent role. As a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral musician, Xenia Loffler has gained an outstanding reputation as a baroque oboist over the past several years. Working with ensembles such as the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin, where she has been active as a member and soloist since 2001, she has toured throughout the world and has performed at some of the most important music festivals and concert halls.

Collegium 1704 / Collegium Vocale 1704 / Václav Luks JAN DISMAS ZELENKA Responsoria pro hebdomada sancta - Lamentatio Ieremiae Prophetae

The music here was written for performance during Holy Week at the splendid Catholic court of Dresden in 1722. The example of Dresden stirred Johann Sebastian Bach to some of his most Italianate flights of opera-like music, and the composer of the Holy Week responsories heard here, the Bohemian-born Jan Dismas Zelenka (whom Bach himself admired), had an experimental, progressive spirit in much of his music. All the more of a surprise, then, to find that these pieces are written in an almost antique style. Each of the three Matins services is divided into three Nocturns, each of which is provided with three pairs of readings or lessons (given in chant) and three responsories, polyphonically set for a small choir (the two-singers-to-a-part forces heard here were apparently typical), with orchestral strings mostly doubling the vocal lines. The first of these is replaced here by one of Zelenka's settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, ZWV 53, a magnificent solo cantata for bass. After that, the entire two CDs' worth of music consists of the alternation between chant and chorus. The interest of the music, low-key indeed compared with something like the St. Matthew Passion but still displaying considerable skill and emotion, lies in the variety Zelenka achieves within this rather strict framework. The choral sections consist of similar elements: homophonic declamation, slow free polyphony, fugal passages, perhaps a short passage for solo voices. But each one has its own structure and flavor, evolving along with the story they tell. The Czech historical-performance groups Collegium 1704 and Collegium Vocale 1704 under Václav Luks do very well here, with a warmly blended yet precise sound from the singers that fits the music very well. This is not the place to start with Zelenka's choral music; one place might be the odd I Penitenti al Sepolchro del Redentore, ZWV 63. But it's a beautiful performance that will impress the composer's growing legion of fans. (James Manheim)

Collegium Vocale 1704 / Collegium 1704 / Václav Luks JAN DISMAS ZELENKA Missa Divi Xaverii ZWV 12 - Litaniae de Sancto Xaverio ZWV 156

Václav Luks’s reconstruction of Zelenka’s Missa Divi Xaverii, edited painstakingly from the damaged autograph manuscript, has just been published by Bärenreiter. The Mass was performed at the court chapel in Dresden on December 3, 1729, on the feast day of St Francis Xavier, a 16th-century Jesuit missionary to India and Japan. It dates from exactly the time when Zelenka had futile hopes to succeed the recently deceased Heinichen as kapellmeister. He might have also had one eye on the fact that the feast of St Francis Xavier coincided with the nameday of the crown prince’s devout wife Maria Josepha, who particularly venerated the saint.

Collegium 1704’s blithe performance conveys a radiant mood in the opening strains of ‘Kyrie eleison’; the solo quartet’s plea for mercy carries through to a shapely choral response adorned by four relaxed trumpets. Hana Blažíková’s limpid singing produces a gorgeous dialogue with a violin and oboe d’amore in ‘Benedictus’, and her duet with Kamila Mazalová in ‘Domine Deus’ is a charming pastoral featuring two bubbling flutes. Lucile Richardot’s rapt ‘Agnus Dei’ is accompanied gently by delicate solo flute and pulsing strings. ‘Quoniam tu solus sanctus’ is a fluid quartet that seems closer to Mozart than to Bach, not least on account of its introductory ritornello juggling a trio of flutes and violas on the one hand, and another trio of oboes and bassoon on the other, while trumpets make surprisingly subtle interjections.

From the heartfelt piety of ‘Qui tollis peccata mundi’ to the thrilling rising sequences at the climax of the Sanctus (‘Hosanna in excelsis’), the choral singing is immaculate. The marginally more compact Litaniae de Sancto Xaverio, also written for the 1729 festivities, has an unusually theatrical impact – especially when a pair of horns let rip in the flamboyant quartet ‘Tuba resonans’, and when the verses refer to the saint giving aid to the shipwrecked and expelling demons in the fantastic chorus ‘Auxiliator naufragantium’. (David Vickers / Gramophone)