In his time, Jan Dismas Zelenka was known as the very successful Bohemian composer working for the court chapel in Dresden. After his death, Zelenka was nearly completely forgotten by almost everyone. In our time, Zelenka has a brief resurgence in popularity with the rise of the period instrument movement. Unfortunately, it was thus Zelenka's instrumental secular works not his choral-orchestral sacred works that experienced a revival, thereby revealing Zelenka as a composer of quirky, even weird, music rather than Zelenka as a composer of superlatively written and supremely moving music. His Die Responsoriem zum Karfreitag from 1723 is a setting of Passion texts for Good Friday and it is surely one of the great settings of those texts. As performed here by
Boni Pueri -- the Czech Boy's Choir -- under the direction of Pavel Horvák and Jakub Martinec, and
Musica Florea conducted by
Marek Stryncl, Die Responsoriem has the solemnity of the most rigorous counterpoint joined to the intensity of the chromatic harmonies and the result is as moving in its way as Lasso's Lagrime di San Pietro and
Bach's Jesu, Meine Freude. The principal reason for this is the performance of
Boni Pueri, one of the clearest, cleanest, warmest boys choirs in the world. The purity of tone and concentration of feeling they bring to Zelenka's music is astounding. Coupled with three instrumental sonatas by Ignac Antonín Tuma -- a successful Bohemian composer of the generation after Zelenka -- this disc is well-worth hearing by listeners who love Baroque music, sacred music, boy choir music, or just plain old great music. Supraphon's sound is cool, clear, and nearly real.