Nothing except some small print in the packaging of this five-disc set of chamber music by Jan Dismas Zelenka tells you that you're getting recordings made in 1972 and 1977 and originally issued on the Archiv label, just a few years after Zelenka's music was first rediscovered and edited. The sound, especially in the earlier group, has all the limitations of the way in which Baroque music was recorded in those days, substituting a metallic sheen that was supposed to pass as sweetness for a detailed rendering of what the instruments were doing. The performances, on modern instruments, were made at a time when historical instruments were just beginning to be heard beyond academic specialist circles. When the booklet boasts that Zelenka's horn parts are difficult even on a modern horn, you can be pretty sure that the point is being missed. All this said, these readings, by a variety of well-known 1970s virtuosi led by oboist
Heinz Holliger and hornist
Barry Tuckwell mixed with a few historically oriented players, were not a bad start when it came to approaching a major and totally unfamiliar composer. The trio sonatas on the last two discs fare best as the unusual continuo group of bassoon, double bass, and harpsichord keeps things moving and avoids the plinking accompaniment that plagued Baroque music in those times. The larger
Camerata Bern group, led by violinist
Alexander van Wijnkoop, does not smooth the edges off the oddness that defines Zelenka in the ensemble pieces such as the curiously named Hipocondrie (CD 3, track 6), with its veering modulations suggesting mental unbalance. For the listener purely concerned with minutes per dollar, this is still reasonable Zelenka, but investigate newer Czech and German recordings as well.