‘Leopold KoŽeluch is without question with young and old the most generally loved among our living composers, and this with justification’, proclaimed the Lexikon der Tonkünstler in 1790. An exaggeration, perhaps (many commentators would have nominated Haydn), but not by much. By all accounts a wily political operator, the Bohemian-born KoŽeluch (1747-1818) vied with Mozart for the approbation of the Viennese aristocracy and achieved European fame as a prolific composer, teacher and publisher. With two Habsburg cantatas already to his credit, he was the go to man in 1791 for a cantata to mark the Prague coronation of Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia. While the coronation opera, Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, evidently bored the imperial couple (‘most of us fell asleep’, reported the Empress), KoŽeluch’s celebratory cantata Heil dem Monarchen was an immediate success and further boosted his standing with the Habsburgs. The following year, after the Emperor’s premature death, he received a court appointment for life.

Like La clemenza di Tito, the cantata holds up a flattering, idealising mirror to the Emperor-King, who emerges not only as a spotless hero and beneficent father figure but, towards the end, as a Christ-like redeemer. As Allan Badley points out in his detailed note, the words of the final chorus, ‘Long live our nation’s protecting deity’, ruffled a few clerical feathers. The cantata – fashioned as a sequence of recitatives, arias and choruses – is a polished, professional piece of work but only fitfully rises above agreeable occasional music. Much of KoŽeluch’s invention has a Singspiel plainness and homeliness, often sounding like Mozart without the master’s transfiguring touch. The most memorable music comes in two graceful soprano arias, the first – a prayer to the Virgin – softly coloured by clarinets, bassoons and horns (shades here of Così fan tutte). Elsewhere Leopold’s boundless benevolence is celebrated in a charming if over-extended pastoral chorus, while his emergence as the nation’s redeemer prompts a gently lyrical trio.

The performance of this Classical rarity is adequate, no more. The slimmed-down Prague Symphony Orchestra play alertly enough, with ear-catching woodwind contributions in KoŽeluch’s many solos, and the small chorus are capable, if slightly thin-toned. But Marek tilec’s direction strikes me as too neutral, lacking in animation and specific shaping. Too many movements seem merely to jog or amble. The German words of both the main soloists are often indecipherable – admittedly not as serious a problem in this adulatory verbosity as it would be in, say, Goethe’s Faust. Tomáš Kořínek's tenor is distinctly raw and monochrome. Happily, soprano Kristýna Vylíčilová is far easier on the ear and sings with feeling both in her touching arias and in a dramatic recitative that evokes Austria’s turbulent past.