Very curious to know how it was.
I only attended the concert on Saturday evening in Prague. It was my very first Zelenka concert and a wonderful experience, not only because of the music but because I got to meet most of the main Zelenka scholars as well as several members of this forum. On my return, I made some notes which I would like to share here:
If you are thrown the keys to a powerful sports car and pointed to a hundred miles of empty road, what would you do? Such a question was asked of Frieder Bernius, one of the greatest early revivers of Zelenka’s sacred music, when he was brought in to guest-conduct Ensemble Inégal, a band which has on regular occasion shown that they are not afraid to go supersonic. With two of Zelenka’s most expressive, energetic and inventive works on the programme Bernius marked his 2016 “Zelenka reboot” in style and challenged a largely Zelenka-familiar audience (the concert concluded the 3rd Zelenka Festival) to a truly emotionally and physically demanding hour of music.
As “overture” we started with a characteristically dramatic reading of the Miserere (ZWV 57) with its dark pulsing strings at the opening, driven incessantly by Inégal’s extremely dynamic bass section. Considering what was coming later in the evening, the chorus then got a welcome warmup with some early 17th century polyphony, transcribed by Zelenka from Frescobaldi’s Fiori Musicali. This nod to the past was followed by the starkly modern Gloria Patris in empfindsamer stil, brightly performed by Andrea Oberparleiter. After the inevitable return to the dark material of the Miserere’s start, we moved to the evening’s main work, the Missa Dei Filii (ZWV 20). The fairly cursory Kyrie is followed by a Christe for solo soprano that is somewhat similar to the Gloria Patris that we had just heard in the Miserere. This time the honours fell to Maria Bernius, who sung crisply, though perhaps filled the church slightly less than her colleague earlier. Then, with a repeat of the Kyrie, the engine was warm and the audience eagerly anticipating what would follow, namely the overdimensional Gloria, one of Zelenka’s most brilliant and original settings - quite something for a composer who mostly only composed brilliant and original music. With the opening movement of the Gloria Bernius and his forces took us on an exhilarating white-knuckle ride, surely obliterating the 9 minute “record” set by an already energetic performance by the Wroclaw baroque orchestra and Dresden Chamber Choir under Vaclav Luks, broadcast on radio earlier in the year (by comparison the two CD recordings of ZWV 20, including Bernius’s own and a live recording of the Freiburg Barockorchester with the Collegium Vocale Gent clock in at between 9:45 and 10:00). Indeed, the pace that was set at the start drew silent gasps from the audience and one almost instinctively reached out for something to hold on to. And then, thoughts turned to the chorus, for when one knows the work, one knows what is coming!! 
Indeed, the nervous grins exchanged between members of the chorus during the opening ritornello said it all: “he said he would take it a tad quicker on the night and he kept true to his word”. However, full credit goes to the singers of the Stuttgart Chamber Chorus – they started second but never sounded like they were just “keeping up” with Inégal – they were full partners in crime in a high octane getaway dash! At these speeds, the text becomes rather less prominent (Zelenka even messes with the order of the liturgical text in order to meet his aims and he also treats the Laudamus te section as a recurring refrain). Instead, the work is like a concerto for two orchestras, one instrumental, one vocal. Both compete for attention with an eclectic mix of leaping acclamations, dizzying syncopation, unison plainchant and, of course, those famous swooping scales. In this performance the latter could actually have been better described as rising and falling glissandi, though they rarely felt out of control despite the ample reverb of the Salvatorska church somewhat muddying the effect. The concentration and virtuosity of the choir cannot be understated – they particularly impressed with the antiphonal entries in the recapitulation of the Domine Deus during which the band tries its best to distract with a repeat of those snakey syncopations of the opening ritornello. And then all those false endings, a trademark of Zelenka, when it seems that first the chorus and then the orchestra try to delay the inevitable. I think we were all thankful for the oasis of calm that came in the form of the Qui Tollis, that wonderful soprano aria with a slinking chromatic accompaniment in which, just when you think it has run its course, up pops a bass, and then a few bars later, a tenor. They reinvent the aria as a duet and go on to really crank up the tension. The soloists and particularly tenor Tobias Mäthger put in a fine performance which reminded us of Zelenka’s apparent deep interest in the world of opera. That interest was further displayed in the almost rage-aria like Quoniam, which followed the troubling strains of the Qui sedes, with its many suspensions in the choral texture beautifully and mysteriously “hung” by the chorus over the restless accompaniment. The Quoniam was taken at top speed but was perfectly phrased by the violins and oboes to add some, almost comical, twists to the various repeated figures. The male alto, Adam Schilling did a fine job with the showy vocal lines. His voice did however seem sometimes a little overpowered by Inégal’s accompaniment.
With the Cum Sancto Spiritu fugue, one of the most ingenious ever composed to that text, we were strapped in for a return to the turbo-charged tempo already encountered at the start of the Gloria. Full credit to the chorus who kept together throughout, though they carried off the those off-beat “oompah” Amens rather less confidently than is possible at a slower tempo. At the close, following that clever recapitulation of the Gloria theme and those glissandi-scales accompanied by a final wild blast of G major from Inégal, the lightning tour ended.
Both Ensemble Inégal and the Stuttgart Chamber Choir gave their all in what was evidently a performance which demanded considerable mental and physical strength. Thanks go to Frieder Bernius (and of course Adam Viktora) for making this unique occasion possible. It was certainly the most energetic interpretation of 18th century music that I have experienced. I am sure many critics would argue it was at times way too fast. Certainly, one could not wallow in Zelenka’s intricate invention, because it flew past and if you blinked, you missed it. However, Bernius knew that his audience were probably mostly familiar with this work, even his own recording of it. So, he was not out to win new fans of Zelenka, but to play to (and with) those “already hooked”. The great thing with Zelenka is that his music is very robust to different interpretations - this one included. In all, this interpretation was both exhilarating and draining and if anyone ever makes a recording like that, I’ll be needing a faster car!
), from left to right, testudo, xanaseb, rnkt
