The Bohemian composer Jan Dismas Zelenka seems to be one of those figures who attracts more compliments than listeners. Even in his own day he won the admiration of Bach and Telemann, while in Dresden his career ended in disappointment after he was passed over for the Kapellmeister's job in favour of the younger and more fashionable Johann Adolf Hasse. Like Bach, he was a composer of contrapuntal skill and harmonic resourcefulness, and he seems, too, to have shared with that composer an interest in consummating the musical language of the late baroque rather than adopting more modern trends.
In style, Zelenka's Lamentations of Jeremiah, composed in 1722, might even be mistaken for Bach, so similar are its unexpected chromatic twists and long melodic lines. In formal outline, however, it is unlike anything by the Leipzig composer. The six lamentations—two each for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Saturday—are a fluid mix of recitative and arioso, each one being rounded off by an extended, aria-like setting of the call to repentance, ''Jerusalem, Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum''. All are scored for a single voice, strings and continuo, with oboes added to the melancholy lamentations for Thursday and Friday, and recorders and a solo chalumeau respectively to the more optimistic Saturday pair (though this recording replaces the chalumeau with an oboe, which is a pity).
Much relies on the singing, of course, and this disc boasts an accomplished line-up of soloists who are secure of tone but at the same time gentle with this plangent music. John Mark Ainsley is a pleasingly light-voiced tenor who can nevertheless cut through the instrumental texture without stridency; Michael Chance is an expressive interpreter of this text; and Michael George's singing always flows, though it could show more dynamic variety. The apparently unconducted instrumental playing is well-shaped and assured, and the overall sound is lent softness by a resonant, presumably church acoustic (in which, however, the voices often sound a shade distant compared to the instruments). Unusual music, then, but a rewarding release.'