Jan Dismas Zelenka
Trio Sonatas

A true journey through the realms of the impossible. This is what the listening experience of the six wonderful "Trio Sonatas" by Jan Dismas Zelenka offers. He is one of the greatest and most underrated composers of baroque music. Unjustly relegated among the titanic figures of Bach and Handel, buried in oblivion for over two centuries, the name of the great Bohemian composer only returned to the attention of the musical scene in the 1950s, thanks above all to the patient work of "rediscovery" by a then barely over twenty-year-old Heinz Holliger.

A work of rediscovery of such importance that it is now known as the "Zelenka renaissance." And these are truly sonatas that deserve light, deserve visibility. Because they shine with an eternal beauty and complexity. They are moving and emotional like a passion. They are brilliance, they are diverse emotions, they are a musical monument. They create, in a demiurgic way, a true parallel world. A world now ecstatic, now raging, now filled with sharp and irreverent irony. And it is certainly the transcendent nature of this music, its ability to rise from the miseries of everyday life to bring an eternal breath of universality, that convinced Manfred Eicher to present Zelenka's "Trio Sonatas" in the prestigious "New Series" of his ECM. And this double CD certainly stands out as one of the most luminous and vivid diamonds of a collection already so rich in precious treasures. Because the music is splendid, but the interpretation by Heinz Holliger and Maurice Bourgue on oboes is also extraordinary.
The technical perfection of Holliger and the tonal sweetness of Bourgue blend into a counterpoint of simply wonderful intricacy. These are those "realms of the impossible" that only great musicians can recreate, where the two oboe voices are the alter ego of each other, never casting shadows but reflecting and multiplying their mutual beauty. And thus the bucolic and pastoral character of Trio Sonata No. 1 refreshes the heart with an atmosphere of festive playfulness, of spring, of blue skies, of petals opening in the air that begins to warm. Or the raging obsession of the Allegro of Sonata No. 4 speaks of a secret but irreplaceable pain, of a flight from one's thoughts transfigured into a great, intricate musical fugue.
But in Zelenka there's also space for challenge, for desecration. And Sonata No. 5 is splendidly ironic, with its three movements in concert form, and the interventions of Klaus Thunemann's bassoon so irreverent as to remind one of a child making faces. Or the violin of Thomas Zehetmair competing with Holliger in virtuosity in the splendid "Tempo Giusto" which triumphantly closes Sonata No. 3.

"There are few works that so challenge the performer intellectually, even before technically. There are few works that come so close to utopia," writes Heinz Holliger in the booklet. But here, believe me, the great Swiss oboist has perfectly succeeded in recreating utopia. And in giving us the idea of how music, and the emotions of the human being that create it, can be eternal.